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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- While the FBI and Yemeni authorities try to find out who was behind the attack on the USS Cole, the Pentagon is reviewing the procedures that are supposed to protect U.S. warships from terrorist attack.

The attack on the USS Cole

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Last remains from Cole bombing ready for return to family Defense official resigned after Cole attack, says warnings were ignored Afghanistan fearful of U.S. military strike after warship attack Cole victims remembered at Arlington memorial

USS Cole attack

The attack on the Cole demonstrated what the U.S. Navy has tried not to publicize: That its warships when operating in commercial waterways at home or abroad are vulnerable to attacks from small boats that give no outward appearance of hostile intent.

The Navy is now taking a hard look at its existing security rules, which make no provisions for the approach of small boats unless there is some intelligence warning of a possible threat.

Threat condition Bravo When the Cole pulled in for refueling at Aden, Yemen, on October 12, there was a threat -- along with a long list of protective measures that were supposed to be in effect.

One such measure drew attention to water taxis, ferries, and other harbor craft "because they can serve as an ideal platform for terrorists," said Sen. Carl Levin (D- Michigan).

On the day of the attack, the Cole was under "threat condition Bravo," a state of alert resulting from an increased but nonspecific threat of terrorism.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the standard protective measures for that level of alert stipulate that "unauthorized craft should be kept away from the ship," and that the crew should be on 15 minute alert, "identify and inspect work boats" and prepare fire hoses for repelling boarders, small boats, and ultra-light aircraft. Small "picket boats" should be put in the water if needed to stop and inspect unauthorized small craft.

A Pentagon investigation will determine if those procedures were followed.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon insists that a CIA report released the day before the Cole attack, and a National Security Agency report 12 hours afterward, provided no information on a specific terrorist threat.

"The reports did not provide enough specificity to allow any skipper or military commander to make a decision to change behavior based on these reports," said Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon.

Dozens of people questioned Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and 39 others wounded when a small boat loaded with explosives pulled up next to the Cole while it was docked for refueling and exploded.

Yemeni authorities are leading the investigation into the Cole bombers' network and say they have detained and questioned dozens of people, none of whom have been charged.

No protective picket boat, seen here after the attack, was in the water when the Cole was most vulnerable

Shortly after the attack, bomb-making materials were found in an apartment near the harbor. Authorities found what they believe to be the hideout of conspirators and the car and trailer they believe was used to get the boat in the water. There was even a small metal water tank, presumably used to test the outboard motor.

At least three safe houses were used, and up the steps of one apartment, binoculars can provide a view of U.S. warships refueling. Yemeni fishermen may also have served as sources of information on ship movements.

A neighbor of the suspected bombers said they spoke like Saudis and that they rented one house for two months.

Investigators say the bombers launched their small boat six miles from where the Cole was refueling. The trip across the harbor would have taken 20 minutes.

A bin Laden connection? Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that among those who have been detained are senior Yemeni, Algerian and Egyptian members of the Islamic Jihad. A number are Arab veterans of Afghanistan's war against Soviet troops.

In an interview with the Middle East Broadcasting Centre, Saleh said Wednesday that an Egyptian -- who is not in custody and may have been killed in the attack -- has emerged as one suspect.

A machine gun was mounted on the bow of the USS Cole after the attack

But when referring to the Islamic Jihad, the Yemeni president would not clarify whether he was referring to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which is known to have close ties to Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden, who has been indicted on charges of masterminding the twin 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

In an interview with CNN last week, Saleh had specifically cited Egyptian Islamic Jihad. When asked if he believed bin Laden was responsible for the attack, Saleh said, "Maybe, but we won't know until there is a further investigation."

Bin Laden was prominently involved in the Afghan resistance and now lives in Afghanistan, but in the MBC interview, Saleh declined to say whether the attackers or detainees had any connection to bin Laden's Al-Qaida group.

A representative of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban in the United States said that "if the U.S. government or any other government provided us evidence, we are willing to take (bin Laden) to trial, according to their desire and their demands."

But Abdul Hakim Mujahid -- making a rare public speech at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts on Wednesday -- said he doubted there was any evidence tying bin Laden to the attack.

Security Heightened After Threat in Aden

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By Alan Sipress Washington Post Staff Writer Friday , October 27, 2000 ; Page A30

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 26 –– A warning of a possible truck bomb attack caused security to be substantially tightened today at the city's premier hotel, where dozens of Americans investigating the bombing of the USS Cole are staying. The warning came around midnight, prompting security officers here to awaken U.S. Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine and to quickly strengthen the already tight cordon around the Aden Hotel. Many of the American officers assigned to the hotel remained awake much of the night as they assessed its security and evaluated what Yemeni officials described as a threat to attack the hotel with a truck filled with explosives.

"We got some information; we considered it as serious," said a senior U.S. government official. "We contacted the Yemenis and we immediately took some efforts to sort of go around and make sure our security posture was what it should be."

The official said that Americans in the hotel, including soldiers, FBI investigators, State Department officials and journalists, were never in "imminent danger."

After the threat was received, a Yemeni army pickup truck with a mounted machine gun was stationed at the entrance to the hotel, blocking the driveway, and a similar vehicle was positioned just outside the grounds on the main street. Yemeni security forces also erected a metal barricade on the street in front of the hotel and kept nearly all vehicles out.

At the front gate, visitors were greeted today by a jumble of armed Yemeni and American security officers. Most people entering the grounds had their bags inspected there, rather than on entering the building as before, and officers frisked many Yemenis who tried to pass.

`RED FLAGS' RAISED BEFORE COLE BOMBING WARNING LACKED SPECIFIC DETAILS, PENTAGON SAYS

By John Diamond, Washington Bureau. Tribune news services contributed to this report. October 26, 2000 WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence warned of a possible terrorist attack against American assets in Yemen 12 hours before the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in a Yemeni port killed 17 sailors and almost sank the $1 billion destroyer, a senior Pentagon official disclosed Wednesday.

The warning lacked information specific enough to enable the military to take preventive action, said Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy. But its existence raised new questions among lawmakers about whether the Clinton administration was responding adequately to terrorist warnings in the Mideast.

It was the second startling disclosure during a day of congressional hearings into the attack.

Earlier in the day, lawmakers revealed that a Pentagon intelligence analyst had resigned the day after the bombing, complaining to superiors that his warnings of terrorist threats against U.S. forces in the Mideast dating to June were ignored. The analyst, lawmakers said, warned in his resignation letter that "two or three other major acts of terrorism" could occur in the coming months, based on his assessment of available intelligence.

House and Senate committees held public and closed hearings Wednesday into the Cole bombing, in which two men steered a small craft alongside the 505-foot warship, which was refueling in Aden, Yemen, and touched off an estimated 500 pounds of explosives.

The blast ripped a 40-foot hole in the steel hull of the ship. Its shockwaves continue to ripple through Washington as lawmakers and senior administration officials consider how to protect the 21,000 U.S. service members deployed in the Persian Gulf region.

"The continued forward deployment of our military units in many places around the world remains an absolutely essential part of our national security," said Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "But we must strike, as a nation, the proper balance between the risks that are assumed by our men and women in uniform ... and the requirement for U.S. presence in strategic locations worldwide."

The crippled Cole still sits in Aden with its remaining crew of 216 awaiting a floating dry-dock ship that will bring it back to its home port of Norfolk, Va., for an estimated $150 million repair job. More than 100 FBI investigators and officials from U.S. intelligence agencies, along with local authorities, are investigating the blast.

A Yemeni carpenter who told officials he helped two men modify a boat to carry explosives was in custody Wednesday. Officials are uncertain if the man knew of the plan to attack the destroyer. A woman who allegedly bought the car that towed the explosives-laden boat to the water is being questioned. Yemeni officials said Yemenis, Egyptians, Algerians and other foreign-born Arabs were being questioned.

Meanwhile, in a development outside the hearings, a senior defense official, providing new details to a report that surfaced Monday, said U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf states of Bahrain and Qatar were placed on high alert over the weekend because U.S. officials got wind of plans for terrorist attacks on multiple targets in both countries.

The targets included a school in Bahrain that is attended by American and other international children, the official said. The school was closed indefinitely on Monday. Other targets included the U.S. Embassies in Manama, the Bahrain capital, and Doha, the capital of Qatar, the official said.

Another report said U.S. officials uncovered plans for a terrorist attack on a military airfield in Bahrain used by U.S. aircraft.

In Washington, the fallout from the bombing of the Cole has begun to take on political overtones, as Republican lawmakers in particular raise questions about whether top Clinton administration officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere did all they could to ensure the safety of U.S. service personnel. Republicans have been pressing to learn whether Clinton administration concerns about improving relations with Yemen influenced the decision two years ago to begin refueling Navy ships in Aden, despite State Department warnings about terrorist group activity in that country.

"I believe that there were enough red flags to at least call into question the decision to stop and to refuel in Aden," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

Slocombe and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in the gulf region, said in testimony to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees that they had no specific warning that could have led to preventive action before the attack on the Cole.

"Leading up to the attack on USS Cole on 12 October, we received no specific threat information for Yemen or for the port of Aden that would cause us to change our assessment" that Aden was safe to use as a Navy refueling stop, Franks said. "Had such warning been received, action would have been taken by the operating forces in response to the warning."

Under questioning by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Slocombe described two intelligence reports, one issued on Oct. 11, about 12 hours before the attack on the Cole, the other issued about five hours after. The later report, officials said, was produced by the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping operations against foreign intelligence targets. This report did not mention Yemen.

Weldon said one intelligence report referred to an "imminent attack on a U.S. or Israeli installation in Yemen." Slocombe replied, "The one that includes the language that you're referring to, as I understand it, was in fact disseminated some 11 or 12 hours before the explosion."

Weldon said the timing of the reports indicates that "somebody in the intelligence community, either at NSA or other people involved in collecting intelligence, had to know that things were occurring hours before the Cole was attacked."

In an interview, a National Security Agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that "There was no signals intelligence on the USS Cole." And a U.S. official familiar with intelligence matters said there was no "actionable signals intelligence information," meaning that none of the NSA's intercepts were sufficiently specific to enable the military to take quick action to protect assets believed to be threatened.

The intelligence analyst who resigned in the wake of the Cole attack was not directly involved in the two reports issued immediately before and after the Cole was bombed. The analyst, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee staff for six hours Tuesday in a closed session. At Wednesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Roberts disclosed portions of the analyst's resignation letter. "His resignation was due to `significant analytical differences,' with his management," Roberts said. Referring to a Defense Intelligence Agency threat assessment issued in June, the analyst, as quoted by Roberts, said his contribution could have played "a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests."

The analyst also said he was "very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggest two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months."

Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, head of the defense agency, said through Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon that the analyst had done good work that was regularly included in agency intelligence reports.

In the wake of Roberts' disclosure, Wilson contacted the former DIA analyst Wednesday afternoon.

"The analyst told Vice Adm. Wilson that he had some concerns about how the agency used his analytical views," Bacon said. "However, the analyst told Vice Adm. Wilson that he did not have information that would have provided tactical warning of the attack on the USS Cole."

Not all of the questions surrounding the Cole bombing are aimed at civilian officials in the Clinton administration. Lawmakers want to know why the Navy issued incorrect information initially about the timing of the bombing. Initial reports said the Cole was in the process of mooring at a midharbor refueling post when the attack occurred and that the small boat was mistaken for a harbor tender.

Later, the Navy said the Cole was already moored and well into its refueling when approached by the small craft, raising questions about whether the crew was adequately following required defensive procedures, such as preventing boats from coming too close to the ship.

Slocombe said the Pentagon consciously, "and I think absolutely correctly," let the crew of the Cole go about the work of protecting their ship before making detailed inquiries about the timing and circumstances of the attack.

Franks defended the decision, made by his predecessor, to use Aden as a refueling port, saying virtually all the ports the Navy uses in the gulf region are regarded as risks for terrorist action.

Pentagon brass to confer on terrorist threats

A Yemeni police boat patrols around the USS Cole as repairs continue in Aden port Wednesday

Cole blast investigators receive bomb threat October 26, 2000 Web posted at: 12:41 p.m. EDT (1641 GMT)

------In this story:

Some U.S. investigators head home

Yemen's president: One bomber may have been Egyptian

U.S. forces in Gulf remain on highest alert

RELATED STORIES, SITES

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CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor, Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers contributed to this report written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Concerned about terrorist threats against U.S. forces -- the latest being a bomb warning at the Yemen hotel housing investigators in the attack on the USS Cole -- Pentagon leaders Thursday planned to discuss security measures with U.S. military commanders around the world.

VIDEO The threat of terrorist attack is highest in Bahrain and Qatar, reports CNN's David Ensor

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ALSO Last remains from Cole bombing ready for return to family Defense official resigned after Cole attack, says warnings were ignored Afghanistan fearful of U.S. military strike after warship attack Cole victims remembered at Arlington memorial

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-372-5463

------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

Using a secure video telecommunications link in the Pentagon, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were to confer with the commanders of all major regional commands.

That includes the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Middle East.

In Yemen, after a bomb threat was phoned into the Aden Hotel, already tight security was stepped up further, but no bomb was found.

FBI agents, military personnel and other U.S. investigators are using the hotel as a base for their operations. Barbara Bodine , the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, is staying there as well. She was awakened and told of the threat, which came from an unknown caller around midnight.

Yemeni and U.S. security officials met in the early hours of the morning and adopted new security precautions, including ringing the hotel with machine-gun mounted military vehicles and stopping civilian traffic from approaching any closer than about 500 yards.

Some U.S. investigators head home The October 12 attack on the Cole in the port of Aden killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 39 others. Officials believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat next to the destroyer and detonated it.

Although dozens of people have been detained and questioned, no arrests have been made.

The bomb threat to the investigators came as FBI personnel finished gathering evidence from the destroyer.

About 80 evidence technicians have returned to the United States from Yemen after completing their work, a federal law enforcement official said Thursday.

The official said that more than 20 FBI agents remain in Yemen, including investigators, security and communications experts.

When evidence recovery experts "have concluded their work, we're bringing them out and trying to do it in an orderly way that will ensure security," Attorney General Janet Reno told her weekly news conference.

The Cole is to be carried back to the United States on a special "heavy-lift" ship, the Blue Marlin, that is expected to reach Aden on Sunday.

Yemen's president: One bomber may have been Egyptian Yemen's president said one of the two suspected bombers was identified by witnesses as an Egyptian and that a number of Arab veterans of Afghanistan's war against Soviet troops had been detained in connection with the blast.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh spoke on MBC television, a Saudi-owned satellite channel broadcast Wednesday from London. He said the detainees were senior members of the Muslim militant group Islamic Jihad, including Yemenis, Egyptians and Algerians.

He did not say whether he meant Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which has ties to accused terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or some other group using that name.

"It's hard to get reportorial work done. I tried to walk out of the hotel two days ago and I had three Kalashnikovs pointed at me." — CNN's Walter Rodgers describes the tight security at the Aden Hotel In an interview with CNN last week, Saleh had specifically cited Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Similarly, in Saleh's prior interview with CNN, the Yemeni president said "maybe" when asked if bin Laden might be responsible for the attack.

U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine, seen in Yemen on October 21, was told in her hotel room that someone phoned in a bomb threat around midnight

A representative in the United States of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said that "if the U.S. government or any other government provided us evidence, we are willing to take (bin Laden) to trial, according to their desire and their demands."

U.S. forces in Gulf remain on highest alert U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region -- including sailors on the crippled Cole and military personnel on nearby support vessels -- remained on their highest state of alert as a precaution against terrorist attacks.

The alert, known as Threatcon Delta, was issued by the Pentagon last weekend in response to what it said were specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in the region.

A U.S. official told CNN Thursday that the targets included an airfield in Bahrain and the U.S. Embassy in Qatar.

U.S. officials also say they have no indication of a threat to an international school in Bahrain, which was closed Monday as a precautionary measure.

The "Delta" order, which also covers U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, keeps all ships in the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet at sea "for the foreseeable future."

Yemeni president: An Egyptian person behind U.S destroyer bombing Yemen, Local, 10/26/2000

The Yemeni president Ali Abdu Allah Salleh said that the primary results of the investigation in exploding the U.S destroyer "USS Cole" confirm that the doer is Egyptian and it is believed that he had another person with him. Yemeni sources said yesterday that the joint U.S Yemeni investigation authorities are making an investigation with a Yemeni carpenter who works in Eden harbor who is accused of helping the terrorists by selling the boat which carried the explosives and headed toward the destroyer.

The sources said that the carpenter admitted his assistance to the terrorists.

Sailor remembered as 'defender of freedom' Town gives Texan a hero's farewell

10/26/2000

By Mark Wrolstad / The Dallas Morning News

ENNIS – Among his last words from the Middle East to his mother, Tim Gauna said he was "in dangerous waters."

On Wednesday, the young Navy seaman killed in a terrorist explosion in Yemen was laid to rest in tranquil fields.

The 21-year-old, eulogized as "a defender of freedom" and "the best America has to offer, a true national treasure," received a hero's farewell in the town where he grew up and dreamed of attending the University of Texas and playing professional baseball.

"Freedom is not free and never has been," said Rear Adm. John Costas of the Naval Reserve Readiness Command in Fort Worth. "Freedom is won by those willing to put themselves in harm's way so this great nation can live in the warm glow of liberty."

Adm. Costas told about 500 mourners overflowing Mr. Gauna's funeral at the Church of God in Ennis that "his spirit lives on" in the resolve and commitment of his fellow shipmates and countrymen.

"Tragically, some are called away too early in their young lives," he said.

Mr. Gauna was one of 17 American sailors – including three Texans – killed Oct. 12 by a blast that shattered the hull of the USS Cole, a Navy destroyer.

The explosion wounded 39 others in the worst U.S. military loss to terrorism since 1996, when 17 Air Force personnel died in a bombing in Saudi Arabia.

During the service, punctuated by the shrieks of the sailor's mother, Sarah Gauna, Adm. Costas walked near the flag-draped casket to present her with two posthumous awards for her son – the Navy Achievement Medal and the Purple Heart. "I just want my son back," Ms. Gauna cried. "I just want Tim."

Mr. Gauna, who was born in Dallas, was a 1997 graduate of Ennis High School and lived the last few years in the tiny town of Rice, about 40 miles southeast of Dallas along Interstate 45.

Friends and eulogists remembered him Wednesday as a kind, fun-loving, respectful young man who was quietly religious and was earning the chance to go to UT through his Navy service.

Like other victims, Mr. Gauna was in the ship's mess hall when the bomb detonated in a small boat next to the Cole, said fellow seaman Eric Baker, his best friend aboard the ship and one of three shipmates attending the funeral.

"We had so much in common," said Mr. Baker, who is from Arlington. "He was energetic. He loved to have fun."

Two large framed photographs of Mr. Gauna stood near the church's entrance and next to his casket, ringed by a dozen floral arrangements and his Ennis baseball cap and jersey, No. 21. He died exactly a month before his 22nd birthday.

People stood along the auditoriumlike sanctuary and spilled out the doors into the entryway, where a photo collage of Mr. Gauna's life was displayed – baby pictures, riding a tiny bike, attending a wedding and family celebrations.

Crystal Carrillo, Mr. Gauna's cousin, tearfully told mourners how the family had clung to hope while he was listed for more than a week as missing and presumed dead.

His remains were returned to Ennis on Monday night.

"That's what we've been waiting for," James Gauna, an uncle, said before the service, "for him to be brought home so we can bury him."

Sobbing, Ms. Carrillo said she loved her cousin so much that "I would've traded places with him."

She described a dream in which she saw her cousin.

"He wasn't crying. He was smiling," she said. "I took it as a sign from God, letting me know he's better off."

Pastor Russell Mills drew comparisons between Mr. Gauna's death in the line of duty and Christ's crucifixion.

"He loved us," Mr. Mills said of Mr. Gauna, who started attending the church as a teenager. "He loved America, and he was protecting all of us. You see, Jesus Christ did the very same thing." Lt. Cmdr. Rich Stoglin, a Navy chaplain, concluded his remarks by having Mr. Gauna's three shipmates stand and by invoking a Navy saying:

"So long, shipmate. Fair seas and following winds. Vaya con Dios."

The funeral procession drove past U.S. flags at half-staff as it crossed town to the cemetery.

At one street corner, an older woman working as a school crossing guard removed her ball cap and placed it over her heart while the cars passed.

As mourners crunched through dry autumn leaves to reach the gravesite, a Navy color guard carried the casket to its final resting place along a line of cedars.

The sailors ceremoniously folded the flag from the casket. Ms. Gauna clutched the flag to her face and wept.

"I'm so sorry, Tim, I wasn't there to take care of you," she cried, supported by her husband, Enrique Esquival. Her two other sons and two daughters embraced and sobbed.

A seven-member Navy rifle squad fired three volleys in salute. A Navy bugler, standing in the distance beneath an old oak, played taps.

But a mother's agony still echoed.

"I love you, Tim. Please! Why? Oh, why?"

Pentagon official resigns, says concerns before Cole bombing ignored Defense Intelligence Agency 'categorically' denies that threat information was suppressed

10/26/2000

By Richard Whittle / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon intelligence official resigned the day after a terrorist bomb killed 17 sailors aboard the destroyer USS Cole and has told the Senate his warnings of a threat to U.S. interests in the region were ignored.

"This intelligence officer ... had jurisdiction over the Persian Gulf and the Middle East," Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. He declined to identify the official by name.

In the resignation letter, Mr. Roberts said, the officer said he was quitting the Defense Intelligence Agency because his superiors failed to act on an analysis he had done that might have played "a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests."

"I believe that there were enough red flags to at least call into question the decision to stop and to refuel in Aden," Mr. Roberts told witnesses from the Pentagon and State Department.

A DIA spokesman, Navy Capt. Michael Stainbrook, confirmed that "a mid-level analyst did resign" the day after the bombing. But he added, "We categorically deny that any threat information has been suppressed in the case of the USS Cole, Yemen or Aden, nor would we ever suppress such relevant information."

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon later issued a statement saying the analyst acknowledged in a conversation Wednesday afternoon with Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, director of the DIA, that he "did not have information that would have provided tactical warning of the attack on the USS Cole." However, Mr. Bacon said the analyst said he had some concerns about how the agency used his analytical views.

A small, explosives-laden boat set off a blast Oct. 12 that killed 17 sailors, injured 39 and put a 40-by-40-foot hole in the destroyer's hull as the Cole was refueling in Yemen's major port.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. Central Command, Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe and Edward Walker Jr., assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, offered no direct comment on the DIA officer's complaint during the Senate hearing. But they testified there was no specific threat reported before the Cole moored in Aden to refuel.

Mr. Walker testified that Ambassador Barbara Bodine and U.S. embassy officials in Yemen "reviewed the situation" before the Cole stopped at Aden.

"There were no specific threats that raised the specter that anything would be different in this refueling than has happened in 25 refuelings [of U.S. ships at Aden] before," Mr. Walker said. "Therefore, they did not choose, or see the need, to advise the [U.S. Central Command] commander that there was a specific or new threat that would affect his decision" to let the Cole refuel there.

Mr. Roberts said the intelligence officer gave a copy of his Oct. 13 resignation letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the resignation letter would "not at this time be made public."

After the hearing, Mr. Warner said the officer felt "his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and was not incorporated in" reports on potential terrorist threats sent to the U.S. Central Command, which handles the Persian Gulf. Mr. Roberts said the former DIA officer also said he was "very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggest two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in coming weeks or months."

The Pentagon ordered U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar to the highest possible state of alert last weekend. Mr. Slocombe said the heightened security was a reaction to a "quite specific threat."

Mr. Roberts said the officer who resigned had worked in the DIA's Office of Counterterrorism Analysis. He said the Senate Intelligence Committee staff had interviewed the official for six hours.

Capt. Stainbrook, the DIA spokesman, said the agency could not identify the officer by name because of "privacy and intelligence issues" but suggested he was less senior than Mr. Roberts portrayed him.

"He worked in an office with other analysts and responded to a boss within that office," Capt. Stainbrook said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., complained that the Pentagon had failed to brief committee members in either open or closed session on a report that the National Security Agency had issued a threat warning for U.S. forces in the gulf the day the Cole was attacked.

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that the NSA issued a warning the day the Cole was bombed saying terrorists were planning an attack on U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf. But it said the report didn't reach U.S. forces until after the bombing.

Gen. Franks said Navy ships had made 186 visits to eight ports in the Middle East and Persian Gulf this year, "and in each case, we're very careful to understand what the threat level is in those areas."

Cole blast investigators receive bomb threat

A Yemeni police boat patrols around the USS Cole as repairs continue in Aden port Wednesday

October 26, 2000 Web posted at: 9:31 a.m. EDT (1331 GMT)

------In this story:

Some U.S. investigators head home

Yemen's president: One bomber may have been Egyptian U.S. forces in Gulf remain on highest alert

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers contributed to this report written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- A bomb threat was received Thursday at the hotel housing U.S. investigators looking into the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, hotel officials confirmed to CNN. Already tight security at the Aden Hotel was stepped up further, but no bomb was found.

FBI agents, military personnel and other U.S. investigators are using the hotel as a base for their operations. Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, is staying there as well.

She was awakened and told of the telephone threat, which came from an unknown caller around midnight.

VIDEO The threat of terrorist attack is highest in Bahrain and Qatar, reports CNN's David Ensor

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

INTERACTIVE US Defense Department Threat Conditions

Timeline: The attack on the USS Cole

See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

ALSO Defense official resigned after Cole attack, says warnings were ignored Afghanistan fearful of U.S. military strike after warship attack Cole victims remembered at Arlington memorial

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-372-5463

------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

Although dozens of people have been detained and questioned, no arrests have been made.

The bomb threat to the investigators came as the FBI technicians finished gathering evidence from the ship and were heading home. After some departures the day before, those remaining from around 80 technicians were to leave Thursday, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The technicians had been "steadily sending" evidence to the United States for analysis, the official said. The Cole is to be carried back to the United States on a special "heavy-lift" ship that is expected to reach Aden on Sunday. Other FBI agents with a more investigatory role remained, the official said.

He did not say whether he meant Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which has ties to accused terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or some other group using that name.

In an interview with CNN last week, Saleh had specifically cited Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Similarly, in Saleh's prior interview with CNN, the Yemeni president said "maybe" when asked if bin Laden might be responsible for the attack.

U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine, seen in Yemen on October 21, was told in her hotel room that someone phoned in a bomb threat around midnight

The alert, known as Threatcon Delta, was issued by the Pentagon last weekend in response to what it said were specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in the region.

It would not describe the nature of the threats and said it had not determined whether they were credible.

The order, which also covers U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, also includes keeping all ships in the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet at sea "for the foreseeable future." USA US options for retaliatory attack

A strike against those responsible for bombing USS Cole will be difficult because of US election and past misfires.

By Peter Grier ([email protected]) and Faye Bowers Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON AND BOSTON

Once again, the US government may soon face one of the most difficult security questions of the modern age: whether - and how - to retaliate for an act of terrorism.

That's because investigators have gotten a fast start in their effort to determine who blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12. Yemeni and US officials have located houses, a car, even ID cards believed to have been used by bomb conspirators.

CONFERRING: General Tommy Franks (c.) prepares for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the bombing of the Cole. ANDY NELSON – STAFF ------

White House officials have said they might strike back if they feel they have fingered a perpetrator. But some complicating factors might make them think twice before pulling the trigger in this case.

For one thing, the coming election could make the timing for retaliation difficult. For another, the last time President Clinton loosed cruise missiles, following the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa, he was criticized for hitting at least one target that may have had no terrorist link. Then there's the smoldering Israeli-Palestinian situation.

The US does not want to do anything to heighten tensions in the Middle East. Yet a military response against a militant Islamic group, if one proves to be connected to the bombing, could well do just that.

"The bombing that is intended to scare them in fact incites them and their friends or ... the whole Muslim community ... to come back at you," says former CIA director Stansfield Turner. "And they feel totally justified for doing it." At time of writing, the White House remained insistent that the case is not concluded. The chain of responsibility for the attack on the Cole has yet to be determined, officials said.

Should the US retaliate for the USS Cole bombing? If so, how? Talk about it.

The US received no specific threat of an imminent attack prior to the bombing, the head of US military forces in the Gulf region told Congress yesterday.

"We are determined to get to the bottom of this. We will put the events that led up to the bombing of the Cole under a microscope," Army Gen. Tommy Franks, head of Central Command, said in an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But a number of experts outside government said that much of what has been disclosed so far points a finger toward terrorist groups controlled or influenced by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi financier living in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bin Laden recently married a woman of Yemeni extraction. His family has ties to Hadhramaut, a remote province in eastern Yemen where at least one bomb suspect apparently spent some time.

A video of Bin Laden making threats against the US and wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger was broadcast on a Qatar-based satellite TV station in September.

US officials only go so far as to say that their prime suspect remains the "jihad movement" of Islamic groups committed to confrontation with the West.

"The evidence is almost overwhelming that it is one group associated with [Bin Laden]," says Stanley Bedlington, a former senior analyst at the CIA counterterrorism center.

Bin Laden has been the target of US military strikes before. After the US determined that he was behind the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, President Clinton loosed cruise missiles against Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, and against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan thought to be connected to him and to be producing chemical weapons.

But the US attracted a wave of international criticism after it became clear that the pharmaceutical plant may have been only that, and not a terror plant at all.

And that shows one of the most difficult aspects of retaliation against terrorism. "The decision to retaliate is not difficult," says Mr. Bedlington. "The difficulty is finding [targets]."

Some US strikes have undoubtedly had an effect, says Mr. Turner. President Reagan's air strikes against Libya may well have lessened its state sponsorship of terrorists. But he says that, in general, it does not actually damage their capability and just hardens their resolve.

"The way you deal with terrorism ... is track these people down and take them through the legal process," Turner says. "We've done it with Lockerbie and the World Trade Center [attacks]."

The November presidential election could be a further complicating factor. Mr. Clinton does not want to be seen as having launched an attack simply to appear muscular and increase Al Gore's chances. Yet neither does he want to appear to be holding off so as to avoid the issue.

"I don't see the administration doing anything unless they are absolutely certain who did this," says Arthur Hulnick, an associate professor of international relations at Boston University.

But others feel that no matter how long it takes, the US must track down the culprits and do something to retaliate. To let the deed go unpunished, they say, could put US troops and embassies in greater danger around the world.

"It puts people on the alert that if they think they are in a war with us, indeed they are," says Michael Corgan, a retired Naval officer and Boston University professor of the history of war.

U.S. Had Hints of Possible Attack Before Cole Was Hit

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By Roberto Suro and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday , October 26, 2000 ; Page A32

U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly picked up indications of a possible terrorist attack in the Persian Gulf in the days and weeks before the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole, but the warnings were not always relayed to military commanders in the area, according to members of Congress investigating the incident. A Pentagon counterterrorism specialist resigned in protest the day after the attack because his superiors had refused to give the Navy information he believed might have averted the suicide bombing, which claimed the lives of 17 U.S. sailors, senators examining the intelligence warnings said yesterday.

In another case, an intelligence report was issued just 12 hours before the bombing indicating possible terrorist activity in Yemen, but it was not considered specific enough to call off the Cole's plan for a brief refueling stop in Aden, said Walter B. Slocombe, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, who testified yesterday before the Senate and House Armed Services committees.

"I believe that there were enough red flags to at least call into question the decision to stop and to refuel in Aden," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

The issue of "what was known and how that information was disseminated" was to be discussed in closed hearings yesterday, said Senate Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.). But even in open session, senior legislators voiced concern that the intelligence and military establishments were not capable of getting important information into the right hands.

"The question we have to ask is, are our current systems applicable to give us adequate warning that something may be about to occur?" said Rep. Curt Weldon (R- Pa.). "I'm convinced we do not have those tools."

The congressional investigation will examine whether intelligence agencies or the military failed to act when the broad thrust of intelligence reporting indicated that Yemen was not a safe place for refueling stops, even though warnings did not emerge about a specific threat.

Warner declined to make public a letter received by committee members from the Pentagon counterterrorism specialist.

The mid-level analyst, who was not named, worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency and was responsible for reviewing incoming intelligence data on Middle East terrorism to determine what was relevant to commanders in the field.

In the letter of resignation, Roberts said, "he indicates his analysis could have played a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests, and goes further to say he is very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggest two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months."

According to a Pentagon statement, the analyst, whose work it said was highly valued, told Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, the head of the DIA, in a conversation yesterday after the hearing, that "he did not have information that would have provided tactical warning of the attack on the USS Cole," meaning information that specified the time and place of a possible attack.

If a warning of a possible attack in Yemen had been received in time, the Cole would not have gone to Aden, which is a well-known haven for anti-American terrorists, said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for military forces in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

"However, leading up to the attack on USS Cole on 12 October, we received no specific threat information for Yemen or for the port of Aden that would cause us to change our assessment," Franks told the Senate hearing. "Had such warning been received, action would have been taken by the operating forces in response to the warning."

During a hearing before the House committee, Weldon pressed Slocombe for information about a classified intelligence report issued earlier this month indicating an "imminent attack on a U.S. or Israeli installation in Yemen."

Slocombe said "that report, as I understand it, was in fact disseminated some 12 hours before the explosion."

After the hearing on Capitol Hill, a senior intelligence official said Slocombe was referring to a CIA report that was widely disseminated on the day before the attack and that outlined terrorist activities in Yemen and other countries in the Middle East. The report said nothing about an imminent attack in Yemen, the official said. The Central Command would have received the report prior to the attack, the official said, but nothing in it was specific enough to justify calling off the Cole's stopover.

Another senior intelligence official said the National Security Agency had produced no signals intelligence pertaining to a terrorist attack in Yemen. An NSA report issued after the attack did mention Yemen, but only in referencing the earlier CIA report.

"I looked at everything [the NSA] put out. There is nothing, even in retrospect, that is actionable stuff," the official said. The NSA "did have the usual ambient noise in collection--terrorism is a big target. My professional judgment--even in retrospect--is that there was nothing that indicated a building crescendo. It was just the standard ambient noise."

At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said, "We did not have warning of a specific attack against U.S. interests in Yemen, and these two reports did not constitute a specific warning." Cole Blast Probe Drawing Closer To Bin Laden

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By Alan Sipress and David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday , October 26, 2000 ; Page A01

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 25 –– The president of Yemen said today that an Egyptian man has emerged as one suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole and Clinton administration officials said the new information was part of a growing body of evidence connecting the deadly attack to Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden.

Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih told a television interviewer that the bombing was carried out by Islamic militants who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation and then moved to Yemen. Bin Laden, who was a leader in the effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, is reported to live there now under the protection of the ruling Taliban militia.

In recent days, U.S. intelligence has identified specific new terrorist threats from bin Laden against U.S. military personnel and others based in Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain, another factor cited by American officials as suggesting he was behind the Oct. 12 attack in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

In addition, bin Laden's militant organization has close ties to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group believed to have played a central role in the attack on the U.S. destroyer. The Egyptian suspect identified by Yemeni authorities is believed to belong to Islamic Jihad, according to U.S. officials.

Both the Yemeni president and FBI officials cautioned that it was too soon to conclude that bin Laden was behind the bombing. But mounting evidence--including overlapping terrorist cells, and similarities between the attack in Yemen and prior incidents connected to bin Laden--has led them increasingly to believe that he and top lieutenants masterminded the attack.

Bin Laden has been indicted for the terrorist bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 in 1998. He recently was televised delivering a threat against the United States while wearing traditional Yemeni clothing. He also recently married a woman from Yemen and has longtime family ties to the country, Clinton administration officials said. U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf are on heightened alert because of the threat of new attacks. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials also are taking steps to thwart an attack by bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, who want to drive the U.S. military out of the region.

"We have received reports that talk about a specific time frame and a specific location. And so that is why we react with the defensive measures," a Clinton administration official said. "They stemmed from a specific and credible report related to al Qaeda."

A senior American defense official told the Associated Press that the targets of the new threats include a school in Bahrain attended by American and other foreign children. The school was closed indefinitely on Monday. Other targets include the U.S. Embassies in Bahrain and Qatar, and an unspecified U.S. military site in Qatar, the official said.

As part of the investigation of the Cole attack, Yemeni security forces have rounded up Islamic activists originally from Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as native Yemenis, the Yemeni president said. While Yemeni security forces in recent years had ejected those who were not citizens of Yemen, Salih said others had eluded the crackdown.

"Pockets remain hiding dressed in Yemeni clothes," he said.

Salih said the joint Yemeni-FBI probe is producing rapid results. Clinton administration officials said they are reviewing preliminary results of FBI laboratory analysis of evidence.

The Cole was struck when a small boat carrying two men pulled alongside the destroyer, which was moored in Aden harbor, and exploded. In addition to pieces of the small fiberglass vessel and traces of the powerful explosives it carried, the FBI is analyzing contents of safe houses in Yemen where suspects in the terrorist attack stayed, officials said.

"We still await the outcome of the investigation. The results will be out soon," Salih said in the interview with the Saudi-owned MBC station, based in London.

The president did not provide any details about the Egyptian suspect, but said a witness had identified one of the two bombers as being from Egypt. Security officials had previously said that a pair of men believed to have been behind the attack spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent, but Salih explained in the interview it would be easy for an Egyptian, Saudi or Yemeni to imitate one another's accent.

He did not say how many individuals might have been involved in the plot in addition to the two seen standing in the attack vessel. However, Clinton administration officials said the suicide bombers were assisted by other experts who put together the device used in the blast. One official said the powerful explosives had a "shaped charge," evident from the way the blast ripped a hole inward in the Cole. During the investigation, the FBI has been chiefly responsible for forensics, tapping expertise and equipment far more sophisticated than what is available here, while their Yemeni counterparts have primary responsibility for questioning suspects.

As the initial phase of evidence-gathering winds down, about 40 FBI investigators left Aden today, and a similar contingent is scheduled to return home Thursday. However, Clinton administration officials said some new agents may be sent to Aden to replace those who are departing. Most of those departing are technical experts.

A senior U.S. government official said earlier this week that the presence of American personnel, concentrated in Aden's two premier hotels, would begin to ebb as the investigation took its natural course. "We are not drawing down anybody we need," the official said.

At the same time, the cutbacks reduce the exposure of Americans to further attacks by shrinking what officials call the U.S. "footprint" in Aden. Before more than 100 FBI agents and other specialists were dispatched, U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara K. Bodine had argued that this would be excessive and that the contingent should be limited to about 15 investigators, according to a State Department official who attended a meeting dealing with Middle Eastern affairs. Bodine lost that behind-the- scenes fight with the FBI.

After the initial influx of FBI agents and divers, dozens more arrived here with additional equipment, and Yemeni authorities provided them with communications equipment and other support.

As this latest contingent was preparing to depart, the investigation reportedly broadened. A local carpenter confessed to Yemeni security officials that he had worked with two suspects modifying a small boat to hold explosives and then helped them load the explosives on board, according to Yemeni sources cited by the Associated Press. The man, who had allegedly rented the suspects a tiny building where they prepared the boat, has not been identified. U.S. officials refused to confirm or reject the report.

A Somali woman, believed to be the owner of a car used by the suspects to haul the boat, also reportedly was questioned. The AP reported that Yemeni investigators believe the suspects had given her money to buy the car for them, another element that Clinton administration officials declined to confirm.

Defense official resigned after Cole attack, says warnings were ignored Pentagon officials tell Senate panel no such threat existed October 25, 2000 Web posted at: 6:42 p.m. EDT (2242 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday that a Department of Defense intelligence analyst quit his post days after the USS Cole was attacked because he believed his repeated warnings were ignored by Pentagon officials.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, raised the matter as the panel held a second round of hearings on the events leading up to the October 12 bombing of the state-of-the-art Navy destroyer as it refueled in the Gulf state of Yemen.

Sen. Pat Roberts

The actual warnings of a threat the intelligence official provided have not been made public. Roberts said the official provided a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, and was subsequently interviewed by staff members for six hours.

The Defense Intelligence Agency said Wednesday that the officer in question did indeed resign on October 14, two days after the attack on the USS Cole. Officials with the agency identified the man as Kie Fallis, a mid-level analyst.

A Defense official who spoke with CNN on condition of anonymity described the analyst as someone who "feels he did not get enough notice from management." The official also described him as an "intense person."

Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his panel would not release its copy of the letter from Fallis.

"What he felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in "the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the Gulf," Warner told reporters after the hearing.

Roberts said the official resigned from the Pentagon's Office of Counterterrorism Analysis on October 13, the day after the attack. He said the official's resignation letter refers to an intelligence assessment in June that apparently predicted a terrorist attack in the Gulf.

"He indicates his analysis could have played a critical role" in the Defense Intelligence Agency's "ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests, and goes further to say he is very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggests two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months," Roberts said.

The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, said "many indicators" could have been used to "suggest two or three major acts of anti-U.S. terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks, month(s)."

The Pentagon denies the charges levied by Fallis. Defense sources familiar with his resignation told CNN that the analyst held a Pentagon briefing on terror threats in the region in the "May-June timeframe," but did not participate in the daily analysis of intelligence data after that time. The Pentagon did announce Tuesday that in response to specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in the Gulf states of Bahrain and Qatar, troops based there have been put on the highest possible state of alert. The Pentagon has refused to reveal the nature of those threats.

Roberts said he wanted to know in closed-door hearings Wednesday afternoon if the official's warning played a role in the decision to place those forces on alert.

During earlier testimony, U.S. officials insisted that there were no intelligence warnings of specific threats in advance of the Cole attack. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, told the committee that the decision to refuel at the Yemeni port of Aden was made on sound military judgement.

Sen. John Warner

"Leading up to the attack on USS Cole on October 12, we received no specific threat information for Yemen or for the port of Aden," he said. "Had such a warning been received, action would have been taken by the operating forces in response."

Franks was joined at the morning hearing by Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Edward Walker, assistant secretary of state. The committee will hear closed-session testimony later in the day from Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, and other defense officials. The same group testifies Wednesday afternoon to the House Armed Services Committee.

Hundreds of FBI and defense officials are in Yemen scrutinizing events that led to the attack on the Cole, trying to determine how explosives aboard a small boat that pulled alongside the ship killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 39 others.

"The Congress has constitutional responsibilities for the safety and welfare of the men and women of the armed forces and their families wherever they are in the world," Warner said. "The oversight hearings which we are now conducting are a vital part of that process."

Last week, the committee convened hearings with former commander in chief of the central command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, the man who made the decision to enter into a ship-servicing contract with the Yemeni government.

"As Gen. Zinni testified, the decision to use Aden as a refueling port was based on solid military judgment. And I agree with that judgment," Franks told the committee.

'Why Yemen?' Franks said U.S. warships had made nearly 30 safe visits to Aden since January 1999, but he conceded the military and U.S. intelligence agencies knew Yemen had been a haven for anti-American terrorist groups.

Gen. Tommy Franks

As he did last week, Warner raised questions about why U.S. Navy vessels began refueling in Aden in 1999, despite travel warnings from the State Department. "Why Yemen, when there are continued State Department travel warnings in effect for that country?" he asked.

"Put yourself in the position of a member of the family of the Cole or citizens across this country who are absolutely shocked and appalled at this incident, where one branch of government says to travelers 'don't go' and the other branch of the government, the Department of Defense, actually says 'go,'" he said.

Walker said that the ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, advised Central Command in March 2000 not to authorize port calls in Aden, citing "general tension in the region and the feeling that there was a requirement or a need for a new review of the security situation in general in Yemen."

But Walker said that were no such warnings against refueling stops, which usually last a few hours and don't require sailors to leave the ship.

Franks: Navy reviewed port Franks told the Senate committee that 19 of the 25 nations in Central Command's jurisdiction are considered "high-level" threats, including Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Of the 186 port stops conducted in the region this year, he speculated that "less than 10" took place in low-threat nations.

Although published reports have said the United States received vague intelligence reports about a possible attack against a U.S. warship ahead of the Cole bombing, Pentagon officials emphasized they were not specific enough to issue a warning to American forces.

"Information of that kind -- had it existed, which it didn't -- would have been disseminated on a most urgent basis to all those affected by it," Slocombe told the committee.

Franks said that the Navy had conducted its own review of the security situation in Yemen before allowing the Cole to proceed to Aden for its refueling stop.

"The process that is gone through is a force protection board that our naval commander sets every week and reviews every port call. And this one was no exception, both the last week of September and the first week of October."

Sen. Bob Smith

However, Sen. Bob Smith, R-New Hampshire, questioned the necessity of Aden as a fueling stop and asked the panel how much fuel the Cole had in reserve when it entered the harbor on October 16.

Franks said that the Cole had "topped off" its tanks before entering the Suez Canal earlier in the month, and put into Aden "at between 50 and 55 percent fuel." The Navy prefers combat-ready ships to stay above 50 percent levels, he added. Franks testified as the United States continued an intensive investigation of the attack, which has thus far not pinpointed any groups responsible. Among those being investigated, according to U.S. officials, is Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden.

"We will find the facts we need to find, and we'll use the lessons that we learn from Cole to provide the best possible force protection for our troops in one of the most dangerous regions of the world," said Franks.

Cole Failed to Get Warning, Senate Panel Learns

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By Roberto Suro Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 25, 2000

A top military intelligence analyst has quit in protest because information potentially warning of a terrorist threat was not relayed to the USS Cole before the destroyer was attacked by suicide bombers in Yemen, according to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

During a sometimes heated hearing with senior Pentagon officials this morning, committee members voiced concerns that bureaucratic inertia and poor decision- making was keeping potentially life-saving information from forces in the field.

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman said, "There is a legitimate question that we will explore in closed session as to what was known and how that information was disseminated."

In the open part of the hearing Warner declined to make public a letter received by committee members from the intelligence officer or to disclose the information the officer felt should have been passed to the Cole.

"What he felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in" the intelligence analysis passed to the military chain of command in the Middle East, Warner said. The intelligence officer, who was not named, worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and resigned the day after the attack on the Cole Oct. 12, said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)

"He indicates his analysis could have played a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests, and goes further to say he is very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggests two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months," Roberts said.

U.S. military bases in Turkey and two small Persian Gulf states, Bahrain and Qatar, have been put on a heightened state of security alert because of intelligence information pointing to specific threats against those installations, the Pentagon announced Monday.

If a warning of a possible attack in Yemen had been received in time, the Cole would not have gone to the port of Aden for a refueling stop, said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for military forces in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

"However, leading up to the attack on USS Cole on 12 October, we received no specific threat information for Yemen or for the port of Aden that would cause us to change our assessment," Franks said in testimony. "Had such warning been received, action would have been taken by the operating forces in response to the warning."

Sources: Yemenis question 2 who may have helped Cole bombers

Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed when an explosion ripped this hole in the USS Cole on October 12 in Yemen

October 25, 2000 Web posted at: 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT)

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Senators: Intelligence expert quit day after bombing

U.S. forces in Gulf remain on highest alert

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CNN Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers, National Security Correspondent David Ensor and Correspondent Carl Rochelle contributed to this report.

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- Authorities in Yemen have questioned a Somali woman who says she bought a car used by the USS Cole bombers to haul their small attack boat, sources told CNN Wednesday.

VIDEO The threat of terrorist attack is highest in Bahrain and Qatar, reports CNN's David Ensor

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The Associated Press, also citing sources, reported that a Yemeni carpenter detained by authorities allegedly helped the attackers modify the boat to carry explosives.

Investigators believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat next to the Cole in the port of Aden and detonated it on October 12. The attack on the destroyer killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 39.

Security officials in Taiz, northwest of Aden, said they had questioned a woman who confessed the men gave her money to buy a car in her name that they used to haul their boat to shore.

The woman was identified only as a Somali. No other details were immediately available.

The carpenter, meantime, confessed Tuesday that he had helped two men refit a small boat to carry explosives and then helped them load the explosives into the boat, the AP report said.

It was not immediately clear if the man knew what the two planned to do with the bomb-laden boat. He was not named.

The carpenter had rented the men the Aden house they used to work on the boat, the AP sources said. They said he had been detained since a day after the bombing, but only provided details of his involvement on Tuesday.

Senators: Intelligence expert quit day after bombing In Washington, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said a U.S. intelligence expert on terrorist threats in the Persian Gulf region resigned the day after the Cole was attacked in Yemen.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said the official quit in protest of what he believed was an unjustified lack of attention to terrorist threat warnings he had provided before the warship was bombed.

The actual threat warnings this official provided have not been made public. Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the committee, said the panel decided not to release a letter the unnamed Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday.

Roberts said the official was interviewed for six hours by the Intelligence Committee's staff.

A memorial ceremony was held at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday honoring the sailors killed on the USS Cole

"What he felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in" the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the Gulf, Warner told reporters after the committee's hearing.

The DIA dismissed reports that the official was a top intelligence expert, describing him as a mid-level analyst.

Although published reports have said the United States received vague intelligence reports about a possible attack against a U.S. warship ahead of the Cole bombing, Pentagon officials have emphasized they were not specific enough to issue a warning to American forces.

"Information of that kind -- had it existed, which it didn't -- would have been disseminated on a most urgent basis to all those affected by it," Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe told the committee.

U.S. forces in Gulf remain on highest alert U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf region -- including sailors on the crippled Cole -- remained on the highest state of alert Wednesday as a precaution against terrorist attacks.

A Yemeni policeman guards a house in Aden that is believed to have been used by the attackers before the bombing

The alert, known as Threatcon Delta, was issued by the Pentagon over the weekend in response to what it said were specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in the region.

It would not describe the nature of the threats and said it had not determined whether they were credible.

The order, which covers U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, also includes keeping all ships in the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet at sea "for the foreseeable future."

U.S. forces in Yemen are covered, too: the crew of the Cole, plus military personnel on seven nearby U.S. ships providing support and security for Americans investigating the bombing and preparing the destroyer for transport back to the United States.

The Blue Marlin, a giant high-tech tow ship on a mission to pick up the Cole, is scheduled to arrive in Aden on Saturday.

Cole Probe Widens

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By Alan Sipress Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 25, 2000 ; Page A22

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 24 –– At least three safe houses, arrayed along the rugged shore of Aden harbor, served as quarters, workshop and lookout perch for two men who prepared since the summer to launch a suicide attack against the USS Cole, authorities here have tentatively concluded after 12 days of investigation.

Yemeni security officers and their FBI counterparts have rapidly uncovered the tracks of a conspiracy since getting a major break in the first days of the probe. That came from a 12-year-old boy, who tipped Yemeni officers that a man had paid him 2,000 rials, or about $12, to watch a four-wheel-drive vehicle, then set out into the harbor in a small boat and never returned.

Since then, the threads of the web have run in various directions: toward Saudi Arabia, because the two suspects spoke Arabic with a Saudi-like accent; toward the mountainous, often lawless Yemeni province of Hadramaut, because one of the suspects used a name common to that area; and toward the fertile farming region of Lahej north of Aden, because a fake identification card found at one of the safe houses had been issued there.

Competing rumors and press reports about the investigation circulate widely in Aden, including speculation about whether two more apartments near the main port were used to make the bombs and about a final will written by the assailants dedicating the attack to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Yemeni and American officials and other sources have not confirmed those stories and stress that they have reached no conclusions and apprehended no suspects. They give the following account of what they do know:

The boy told Yemeni security officials that a bearded and bespectacled man had paid him to watch his car near the port on the morning of the bombing. The man then lowered a boat off a trailer and set out into the harbor. Officials are uncertain if this boat was the one that detonated alongside the Cole, or whether it was used in some other way in the attack.

The car allowed investigators to track the man back to a house in al-Baraiqa, or Little Aden, west of Aden at the entrance to the city's expansive harbor. There, investigators discovered what they described as bomb-making material and found that two suspects had rented it before the attack on the Cole.

Neighbors and the landlord described the residents as Arabs with Persian Gulf accents, most likely Saudi, though some Yemenis speak with that accent.

The house is located down a narrow lane, known benignly as Zahra, or Flower Street, not far from Aden's oil refinery in a middle-class seaside neighborhood of smaller homes and extravagant villas. Tucked behind a high cinder-block wall and an ocher metal gate, it is a simple one-story white dwelling with green trim and a peaked tin roof, partly shaded by a few trees.

By the side of the house is a metal tank with a notch cut in the side. Investigators believe the tank, filled with water, was used to test outboard motors.

Just over a bridge that carries the main coast road over an inlet and into al-Baraiqa, investigators examined the ramp that the boy said the man used to launch a fiberglass boat. Security officials have pitched green military-style tents at the water's edge as they recover evidence there.

Through leads that have not been disclosed, investigators also located a second, tiny structure in the gritty, impoverished Madinet ash-Shaab neighborhood, about halfway from Aden to al-Baraiqa. There, investigators believe, the suspects readied a boat to carry a massive explosive. Neighbors described hearing welding and other sounds of work going on there.

Security officials also found their way to yet another home, which was apparently used as a lookout. It is a modest apartment perched on a rocky cliff side behind a high stone and cinder-block wall in Aden's Tawahi neighborhood. The apartment is in a two-story building on a rough stone and dirt road that meanders up one of the city's bare hills. Many residents on the street are army officers, neighbors said.

Indeed, the apartment offers a panoramic view of much of the harbor and the dozens of large freighters and small skiffs navigating its waters. The crippled American destroyer is in clear sight.

Neighbors said the apartment was frequented by at least one of the suspects, a man with a beard and glasses, as well as a colleague, according to the Associated Press. The men were said to have talked with local fishermen on the beach about the movement of ships in the harbor and how far out fishing boats were allowed to go. A pair of binoculars and some Islamic publications were reportedly found in the apartment, which was rented by a man who signed the lease Abdullah Ahmed Khaled al-Musawah, the AP reported.

That name was found on a false identification card included in personal documents seized in the safe houses. Yemeni investigators have detained for questioning employees of the civil registration office in Lahej, about 20 miles north of Aden, where the ID card was issued.

But despite the progress, a senior U.S. government official repeated today what has become a mantra at daily briefings: No conclusions; no suspects in custody.

While attributing the Oct. 12 bombing most likely to "jihadists," shorthand for armed Islamic militants, the senior official said it was far too early to pin the attack on any specific organization, individual or nationality or to conclude whether more than two individuals were involved.

American and Yemeni officials surmise that the attack, which left a 40-by-40-foot hole in the hull of one of America's most modern destroyers and killed 17 sailors, must have involved more than the two men and reflected expertise unlikely to be homegrown in Yemen.

The FBI has dispatched scores of agents, technicians and other experts to Aden. It has brought in sophisticated forensic equipment unknown in this desperately poor country and has shipped possible evidence from the harbor, the safe houses and other locations back to the United States for testing.

U.S. officials, however, attribute the rapid gains so far to old-fashioned detective work by Yemeni gumshoes themselves. "The Yemenis did some really first-rate police work," said a senior official. "We may have helped a little bit."

The Yemenis are responsible for interrogating witnesses and others with possible information. The more than 100 people already questioned include port workers, government employees, neighbors and acquaintances of the suspects, and officers of the local firm supplying the Cole, the Mansoob ship supply and trading company.

FBI crime lab examines USS Cole evidence as Navy prepares to send ship home

The USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, on Monday

October 24, 2000 Web posted at: 9:37 a.m. EDT (1337 GMT) ------In this story:

'The bomb was sophisticated'

Transport ship en route

$4.5 million transport cost

USS Cole is stabilized

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From CNN Correspondent Kate Snow and CNN National Security Producer Chris Plante

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI crime lab in Washington is studying several crates full of material gathered from the USS Cole as part of a criminal investigation, a source close to the investigation said Monday.

Most of materials come from the site of the explosion and water beneath the vessel. Seventeen sailors were killed in the apparent terrorist attack, which blew a massive hole in the side of the guided-missile destroyer on October 12 while it was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen.

'The bomb was sophisticated' Some of the first evidence samples to arrive were swabs containing explosive residue from the bomb, which was apparently aboard a fiberglass boat that pulled alongside the Cole. The crates also contain pieces of the fiberglass boat and fragments of human remains.

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"The bomb was sophisticated," said a source close to the investigation, adding that whoever was responsible for the blast must have had a well-developed infrastructure to put together this type of device.

It will be difficult to isolate the particular explosive used, since the USS Cole routinely carries explosive materials, the source cautioned.

Transport ship en route Meanwhile, the giant transport ship Blue Marlin departed Monday for Aden, where the crippled Cole will be loaded onto its deck to begin the journey back to the United States, Navy officials told CNN.

The Norwegian-owned Blue Marlin left Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and is expected to take four or five days to reach Aden, according to Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley.

Once in Aden, the ship's crew will work with Navy engineers to position the 505-foot Cole on the deck of the 712-foot Blue Marlin, which is designed to haul offshore oil rigs.

That process is expected to take about seven days as an oceangoing Navy tug, the Catawba, helps to maneuver the Cole into deeper water. The Cole is expected to arrive in the United States for repairs in late November or early December, Quigley said. The actual destination in the United States has yet to be decided.

$4.5 million transport cost The Navy expects to pay about $4.5 million to the owners of the Blue Marlin for the shipping contract, Quigley said last week.

The Blue Marlin will lift the Cole onto its deck by letting water into its ballast tanks, partially submerging itself.

With its ballast tanks full, the Blue Marlin's center deck section will be sufficiently submerged to allow the Cole to be positioned over its deck.

Water then will be pumped from the ballast tanks, which resurfaces the Blue Marlin for the trip home with the Cole atop its deck.

Cole is stabilized A senior Navy official told CNN the Cole would have to be moved offshore five to seven miles to provide sufficient water depth to accomplish the difficult operation.

"The Cole is towable, pushable, movable, (but) not under its own steam," the official said, adding that the Navy is assessing the "basic logistical issues of finding the right (water) depth" for the maneuver to be carried out.

The Cole has been sufficiently stabilized to allow it to be moved, said the Navy official. However, it is unclear if the FBI or other investigators will object that moving the ship might cause evidence to be lost that is needed to investigate the attack.

Meanwhile, the official said, there are no new leads into who was responsible for the blast. The investigation is being carried out by a joint U.S.-Yemeni team.

"We haven't ruled anybody in or ruled anybody out," the official said, refusing to speculate on who had the capability to carry out such an attack. "We still don't know exactly how it was done."

The remains of four of the 17 sailors killed in the bombing were flown back to the United States on Sunday, arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The bodies were the last to be returned.

Workers Questioned on Fake ID in Cole Probe

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By Alan Sipress Washington Post Staff Writer Monday , October 23, 2000 ; Page A14

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 22 –– Investigators have detained employees of a government registration office for questioning about a false identification card believed to have been used by a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, Arab sources said today.

Yemeni officials said the card was issued in the Lahej province about 20 miles north of Aden, the port where suicide bombers attacked the Cole while it was refueling on Oct. 12, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

The name on the July 1997 card was Abdullah Ahmed Khaled Musawah, who was registered as a resident of Lahej, the Associated Press said. The news service reported that all records relating to this card, one of several fake identification cards that may have been issued in Lahej, have disappeared from the registration office.

Yemeni and American officials said they had found personal documents last week after discovering two houses in Aden used by at least two suspects in planning the attack and preparing the bomb.

Lahej, a fertile agricultural area in southern Yemen, is adjacent to the Aden province, where security officials said two suspects stayed for at least six weeks before the bombing. Investigators still have not determined whether these two suspects were the same men seen standing aboard a small boat moments before it pulled aside the Cole and exploded.

The registration office employees are among more than 100 possible witnesses and others thought to have information who have already been questioned about the attack.

More FBI agents arrived in Aden today with additional equipment, joining more than 200 U.S. investigators, military personnel and other support staff already in Yemen, a small country at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. A senior U.S. official said additional agents were needed to keep up with the growing number of leads and expanding evidence.

"Because the investigation is going well, they have brought in reinforcements so they can continue to move at a good pace," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official also reported that most of the contents of one house, where investigators discovered bomb-making material, has been transferred to the United States for analysis. Possible evidence from other sites has also been flown to the United States because Yemeni investigators lack the equipment and sophistication to examine it, U.S. officials said.

But despite the reported progress, security officials said they have yet to determine precisely how the attack was executed, by whom and why. "No one has ever seen an operation like this before. It's hard to make out an MO," the senior official said. "There is no one who has been arrested who has been directly, fundamentally linked to what is going on."

While U.S. officials continue to identify fugitive Islamic militant Osama bin Laden as a leading suspect, they also are still weighing the possibility that the attack was directed by a country hostile to the United States.

"At this point, we are not going to rule out state sponsorship," the senior official said. "It is not being ruled out or ruled in."

'Killed in Action': Is Gender an Issue?

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By Thomas E. Ricks and Steve Vogel Washington Post Staff Writers Monday , October 23, 2000 ; Page A03

In the tense hours after the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct. 12, Chris Ferretti was among the spouses who waited anxiously at Norfolk Naval Station for news about their loved ones aboard the crippled ship in faraway Yemen.

But unlike most of the others, Chris Ferretti is a man. When his wife, Petty Officer 2nd Class Loretta Lynn Taylor Ferretti, finally was able to call, she told him that she had been very lucky. Shortly before the blast, she decided to skip lunch in favor of a nap. She was asleep when the explosion hit the ship's mess. The attack on the Cole, which appears to have been the first major terrorist attack on a U.S. warship, also marked another milestone: It was the first time that women permanently assigned to a Navy combatant ship have died in an attack on that ship, according to Lt. Jane Alexander, a Navy spokeswoman. She chose those words carefully because the Navy is not sure whether a female nurse ever was killed while serving temporarily on a warship.

Two of the 17 sailors who died aboard the Cole were women--Lakeina M. Francis, 19, of Woodleaf, N.C., and Lakiba Nicole Palmer, 22, of San Diego--a fact the country appears to have taken pretty much in stride. "Whether they're male or female doesn't matter," said Rear Adm. John Foley, commander of naval surface forces for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. "The focus has been on all Cole sailors."

"The story is that there is no story," said another senior Navy officer. "The media didn't say, 'Holy mackerel.' "

Academic experts on the military also have noted the lack of controversy. "I have to admit to being surprised that there was no media coverage related to the fact that women died aboard the Cole," said Juanita Firestone, a military sociologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

But there is sharp disagreement among the experts about what this means.

One school says the large, and growing, role of women in the military is now widely accepted. "I think the American public has gotten used to women being killed in the line of duty, not only in the military, but as police officers," said Mady Wechsler Segal, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

Adds retired Navy Capt. Georgia Sadler, "The public understands that people who serve in the military can be killed, regardless of their gender. Thus, the public is taking the deaths of women in stride, and, rightfully, mourning for all the casualties of the Cole as sailors and heroes."

The other, more conservative view is that the American people's tolerance for the deaths of female soldiers and sailors has not been put to a full test.

"I suspect this is not yet the crossroads," said Cap Parlier, a retired Marine Corps test pilot.

In the Cole bombing, he noted, "the public never saw bodies, just a big hole in the side of the ship, a number of flag-draped caskets, some names and portrait photographs." He said he believes that the public will react vigorously when it someday sees photographs of "the semi-nude body of a female pilot being dragged through the streets of some Third World country."

Both schools agree that the 1991 Persian Gulf War was a watershed. Before that, most women in combat theaters were nurses.

During World War I, according to the Defense Department, no military women died in action, but 102 were felled by influenza and injury. During World War II, 16 nurses were killed in action, 14 died in aircraft crashes and other accidents, and 312 were killed by disease. Fifteen nurses died in Korea, and 10 in Vietnam.

But the Gulf War was the first time that American women went to war in large numbers as combatants. Some 37,000 were sent to the Gulf region, making up 7 percent of total U.S. forces there. Five Army women were killed in action, and nine others died in accidents, according to the Pentagon.

In an even greater shock for public opinion, two U.S. women were taken prisoner by Iraqi troops. Early in the war, Spec. Melissa Rathbun-Nealy became the first female American POW since World War II when she was captured while driving an Army truck in Saudi Arabia near the Kuwaiti border. Later on, then-Maj. Rhonda Cornum, a flight surgeon, was shot down while on a combat search-and-rescue mission over Iraq.

Rathbun-Nealy later declined to discuss her experiences as a prisoner, but Cornum made headlines when she disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted.

Overall, the Gulf War was seen by many women as a successful test of their expanded place in the U.S. military. "Women performed vital roles, under stress, and performed well," concluded the section on female personnel in the Pentagon's official report to Congress on the "Conduct of the Persian Gulf War."

After that conflict, the Pentagon dropped a variety of restrictions, and today 92 percent of military career fields are open to women, including virtually all combat jobs in the Navy and Air Force, except in Special Operations and aboard submarines. In the Army, women fly attack helicopters but are still barred from most ground combat roles in the infantry, artillery, armor and combat engineer branches.

There is general agreement among the experts that, given the large number of women in combat billets, the next time the United States fights a large-scale ground war, women may die in large numbers. Also, analysts say, the nature of warfare is changing, making rear areas almost as vulnerable as the front lines, so that even if more combat slots aren't opened to women, they still are likely to be exposed to hostile fire.

It remains to be seen what the public reaction will be then, said John Sibley Butler, a military sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin who served as a combat medic during the Vietnam War. He noted that on certain bad days in Vietnam, he sometimes put more dead soldiers in body bags than were killed aboard the Cole.

But former Navy secretary James Webb says an opposite, colder reaction may occur. He worries that 25 years of an all-volunteer force have left most Americans feeling distant from their armed services, and so perhaps less concerned by casualties.

"They respect the military," said Webb. "But with the volunteer system, fewer and fewer Americans have any personal stakes when our people go into harm's way."

Military Women Women represent a substantial portion of each branch of the military.

Number of women in uniform:

Percent of personnel who are women:

Army

Number of women in uniform: 70,687

Percent of personnel who are women: 15%

Air Force

Number of women in uniform: 65,746

Percent of personnel who are women: 19%

Navy

Number of women in uniform: 49,746

Percent of personnel who are women: 14%

Marines

Number of women in uniform: 10,272

Percent of personnel who are women: 6%

Number of women in uniform who died in action or from disease:

* World War I: 102

* World War II: 342

* Korean War: 15

* Vietnam War: 10

* 1988 Naples terrorist bombing: 1

* Persian Gulf War: 14

* 1995 Oklahoma City bombing: 4

* 1998 Kenya bombing: 1

* Oct. 12 attack on ship in Yemen: 2 SOURCE: Defense Department

Naming the Suspects

At Least Six Suspects in USS Cole Attack

A Yemeni policeman guards a house in Aden on Oct. 21 which authorities say may have been used by the attackers prior to the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden port. (Hasan Jamali/AP Photo)

Oct. 23 — Investigators into the bombing of the USS Cole now have the name of a suspect: Abdullah Ahmed Khaled al-Musawah. But that may not be his real name. Investigators have new leads. RealVideo (download RealPlayer) Al-Musawah’s name is one of several investigators have uncovered for people involved with the Cole bombing, found on fake I.D.s and in documents in homes and cars. “In some cases they have some names,” said Barbara Bodine, U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “They have not been able to verify whether they’re accurate, true names…I don’t believe they have the identities yet.” Sources told ABCNEWS some of the bombers might have used identification cards issued by a government registration center in Lahej, 22 miles north of Aden. One bomber was believed to have used a fake I.D. card indicating he was al- Musawah, a resident of Lahej. Authorities believe more fake cards were issued by the civil registration office in Lahej. The director of the registration office in Lahej, and several of his clerks, have been detained for questioning. However, investigators in Lahej did not find the location mentioned on the I.D. card and nobody in the tight-knit community knew the person whose picture was on the I.D. card, leading investigators to believe that the bearer of the I.D. used the faraway province as a fake. The bombing, on Oct. 12, involved a small boat which exploded and blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39. All the bodies have now been shipped home. Six Suspects Investigators believe there were six or more people involved in the attack, in which a small boat packed with sophisticated explosives rammed the Cole’s bow, as it lay at anchor refueling in the port of Aden, in Yemen. Investigators have come up with a list of names of possible suspects found on papers in the houses and cars they’ve searched. Since Friday, they have expanded their search of houses around the port of Aden believed to have been used in planning the attack. In one of the houses, the suspects erected a corrugated wall to block the neighbors’ view. Investigators say that toward the end of their stay, the suspects worked almost constantly on the boat, prompting curiosity, and then complaints, from neighbors. A large hole was blown in the side of the USS Cole as it stopped in Aden, Yemen, to refuel. The search for suspects has expanded to Saudi Arabia and the eastern Yemeni province of Hadhramaut. (ABCNEWS.com/ Magellan Geographix)

On the day of the bombing, neighbors saw the boat leaving the house, being towed by a Nissan four-wheel drive truck.

Economic Concerns On the streets of Aden, news of the attack on the Cole has been greeted with exasperation bordering on despair, according to reports in the Yemeni media. “Initially, the reaction to the bombing was one of shock because generally, the harbor has been regarded as a safe place” said Bashraheel Hisham Bashraheel, a Yemeni journalist with the Al-ayyam, the leading Arabic daily. “But now, Yemenis are worried about what will happen after the U.S. investigation team leaves. They are worried the international community has lost confidence in Yemen in the longterm.” The bombing comes after concerted efforts by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to attract foreign investments to the country and to turn Aden into a free trade zone such as Dubai in the neighboring United Arab Emirates. Following Saleh’s election in October 1999, the government has made efforts to fight the widely-held perception of the country as a haven for international terrorist groups. There have been moves to improve border control and to initiate training of security forces in anti-terrorism techniques. Yemen has also signed a number of international antiterrorist conventions, although the enforcement of the agreements is believed to be lax. But the economic fallout of the bombing has been of most concern in Aden. The tourism industry had barely recuperated from the damage done in the abduction of 16 Western tourists on Dec. 28, 1998 when the latest violence struck. The economy has been reeling from a loss of almost $350 million in tourism dollars in the past year. The Cole attack has left a feeling of despair in Yemeni households, said Bashraheel. Nevertheless, he said, there was no discernible reaction to the presence of U.S. investigators. “The U.S. presence in Aden is barely noticeable,” he said. “And I don’t believe there is a popular anger against the U.S. in Yemen. Even during the recent demonstrations (against Israel), there has merely been a showing of support for the Palestinians. You don’t, for instance, see the burning of American flags in Aden. They are simply interested in improving the state of the economy.”

Probe Widens Although no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, investigators say the way the bombers organized the plot bears stark similarities to the way accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden’s cells have operated in the past. Bin Laden is believed by U.S. law enforcement officials to be the mastermind of the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed over 224 people. Investigators are aware that just three weeks before the bombing of the Cole, bin Laden released a video calling for a holy war against Americans in the Persian Gulf. It is unclear what relationship, if any, the video may have with the bombing of the U.S. ship. Investigators have also widened their probe into the blast to Saudi Arabia and a remote Yemeni province. One of the apartments, and a vehicle believed to have been used by the attackers, yielded documents believed to be from the eastern Yemeni province of Hadhramaut, Yemeni security officials said. Investigators have been dispatched to Hadhramaut, a region along the eastern border with Oman that is home to lawless tribes that have kidnapped foreigners for ransom.

Navy Changes Story Last week, the Navy revised important details in its recounting of events leading to the blast, saying it occurred nearly two hours after the Cole had been moored to a fuel dock, and at least 45 minutes after the refueling operation began — not during the mooring operation, as it had said before. “We have updated some of the original information we have received regarding the timeline of operations. The Cole had completed mooring operations at the time of the explosion,” says Navy spokeswoman Lt. Meghan Mariman. In a press release, the Navy had originally said the attackers were seen helping tie the boat to buoys when they turned and attacked. Because the attackers appeared to be helping, Navy officials have said, the boat did not appear hostile when it approached the ship. It is now less clear than before how the attacking boat could have approached the Cole without raising suspicion. “Now that the investigation is under way, it is uncovering some further detail that we didn’t have,” said Lt. Mariman. Mariman would not say whether the Navy is revising its report that the boat was seen helping with the mooring. “That will all come out in the investigation.”

Last 4 bodies from USS Cole coming home today

Sailors carry one of four flag-draped caskets onto a U.S. military transport before departure to Dover, Delaware

October 22, 2000 Web posted at: 2:13 a.m. EDT (0613 GMT)

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Materials from house on way to Washington

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CNN Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers and Justice Department Producer Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Delaware (CNN) -- The remains of the last four sailors recovered from the USS Cole will be returned to the United States today. The aircraft carrying the remains from Yemen is due to arrive at Dover Air Force Base at 11 a.m., after which a brief ceremony will be held.

VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher reports on a videotape that may contain clues to the USS Cole bombing

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------Watch CNN's interview with Saleh

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CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports the ship's commander commends sailors' actions in a video sent to their families (October 18)

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AUDIO FBI Director Louis Freeh, speaking at a news conference Thursday, says he is pleased with the progress of the Yemen investigation

431 K/40 sec. AIFF or WAV sound ------

FBI Director Louis Freeh arrived in Yemen on Thursday and toured the bomb- damaged USS Cole

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TRANSCRIPT FBI Director Louis Freeh news conference on USS Cole Investigation in Aden, Yemen

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MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

The remains will be prepared at a base mortuary so they can be returned to the families, a Navy statement said. The remains of eight of the 17 sailors killed in the October 12 attack arrived at the base on Friday.

The bodies of the first five dead were brought home on October 14.

U. S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told a news conference on Saturday that the investigation into the bombing of the Cole was expanding and turning up new leads.

"There are no conclusions yet on the investigation on either who, how, to a certain extent where and certainly not the why," she said.

'They're still developing new leads' "They are continuing to find investigatory sites, they're still developing new leads."

Witnesses had said two men stood up in a small boat as it exploded alongside the guided missile destroyer.

But Bodine said the joint team of Yemeni and FBI agents was still working on the numbers of people involved.

"There are discussions about how many individuals might have been at the house, how many people might have been involved in the actual attack," she said.

FBI agents in Aden, Yemen, have taken swabbings of explosive residue and other materials from the apartment where Yemeni security officials earlier this week discovered bomb-making materials.

Scientists at the FBI lab were expected to receive and begin the analysis of the new batch of evidence this weekend.

Evidence may still lead to bin Laden The investigators are still assuming the evidence may eventually lead to a murky global terrorist network and to Osama bin Laden or his top associates, sources familiar with the investigation said. Yemeni officials are being fully cooperative in allowing U.S. agents to collect whatever materials they want in the investigation, U.S. officials said.

Aden authorities believe the two bombing suspects built a metal fence along the house they rented in a suburban neighborhood to keep their activities hidden from neighbors, many of whom work at nearby oil storage depots.

It was at that location that the suspects are believed to have built the bomb, packing a small boat with explosives. It was later taken on a trailer to a boat ramp about a kilometer, less than a mile, from the house.

But the fence did not completely hide what was going on at the property: Workmen in a nearby building had a bird's eye view of the courtyard where the boat was kept. And a boy first told Yemeni police where the men launched the boat.

Among the many people questioned in the case are the landlord of the rental property and a real estate agent who found it for the men.

No criminal charges have yet been filed in the case.

Materials from house on way to Washington One veteran collector of explosive evidence for the FBI said residue on the doorknobs, beds, light fixtures and even drains of the house can provide clues to the precise makeup of the explosives.

On Friday evening, bags of the collected materials were en route from Yemen to the FBI headquarters crime laboratory in Washington for analysis. Two officials said the material from the apartment would be compared with residue from the USS Cole, which arrived at the lab earlier this week.

Sources said they have not yet definitively determined the specific explosives used in the blast, but expected they would probably be able to do so by early next week.

The sources said reports of a search for two or more people, in addition to the two suspected bombers who are believed to have died in the explosion, is based on assumptions and eyewitness accounts.

One of the difficulties for FBI investigators has been the reliability of eyewitness recollections, including the child who said he saw the alleged participants in the plot.

FBI Director Louis Freeh and his top counter-terrorism aides returned home to Washington on Friday after a brief trip to the bomb scene in Yemen. But FBI officials said Freeh and his party had no further comment on the pace or direction of the investigation.

The house, shielded from public view, is where investigators suspect the boat bomb was built

Videotaped threat to U.S. forces in Yemen The United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

But no one has publicly announced him as a suspect in the Yemen attack. The Taliban militia that rules Afghanistan denied this week that bin Laden was responsible for it.

Bin Laden's close associate, Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, appeared with bin Laden on a videotape shown by the Middle East satellite network, al-Jazeera, about three weeks before the attack -- although U.S. intelligence officials tell CNN it is many months older than that.

On the tape, al-Zawahiri makes a direct threat to U.S. forces in Yemen. According to a transcript of the broadcast he says: "Enough of words, it is time to take action against this iniquitous and faithless force (the United States), which has spread its troops through Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia."

The New York Times reported Friday that U.S. intelligence officials received reports in late May that a militant Egyptian Islamic group was in the final stages of preparing a terror attack against American targets.

The October 12 attack on the USS Cole killed 17 sailors and injured 39

Navy Revises Initial Account Of Bombing

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By Roberto Suro and Alan Sipress Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday , October 21, 2000 ; Page A01

The Navy yesterday gave a new account of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, saying the destroyer had already moored and was refueling when it was approached by a small boat laden with explosives in Yemen eight days ago.

The revision casts doubt on previous assertions by top Navy commanders that the bombing was virtually unpreventable because the small boat blended in with harbor workboats helping the U.S. warship tie up to a fueling station in the port of Aden. In fact, the Navy now says, the apparent suicide attack took place more than 90 minutes after mooring had been completed. At that point, as the ship was already refueling, there was no reason for a small boat to approach the Cole. Sailors with guns had been posted on deck.

The new account also raises questions about the extent to which the attack was an "inside operation." While the terrorists may have had advance knowledge of the ship's arrival, it is unclear whether they had infiltrated the port's work force. Investigators now believe the boat may have been launched from the shore and may have had no connection to the Yemenese company contracted to perform the refueling.

The revelation that the Cole was taking on high-test fuel for its gas-turbine engines at the time of the explosion also means there was a greater danger of a catastrophic explosion that might have sunk the ship or killed more of its crew. The bombing took the lives of 17 sailors and injured 39.

In repeated public statements over the past week, Adm. Vernon Clark, the chief of naval operations, had argued that because the small boat was involved in the mooring, the crew of the Cole "had no reason to suspect . . . that there was anything to be suspicious about," as he put it in an interview on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" last week.

"The reason that a ship, a small boat like this, could get in this proximity to the USS Cole is that it was part of the party, the support party that was assisting the ship in tying up to their berthing position," Clark said in an interview with CBS News.

According to a written statement by the Navy yesterday, the erroneous accounts "by senior Navy leadership were based on initial voice and relayed reports from the ship that were not confirmed." Those reports, the statement said, "contained some errors, and in some cases were misunderstood back here."

Over the past week, Clark and other senior Navy officials here have spoken with the Cole's skipper, Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, as well as with Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, who is overseeing emergency operations on the scene, and with other Navy officers on the eight-ship flotilla now assembled in Aden.

However, no one asked them to clarify the Navy's initial account of the bombing, said Cmdr. Gregg Smith, a Navy spokesman. Instead, all of the Navy's public statements have been based on two reports filed by duty officers at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain in the hours immediately after the blast.

The first report was based on cellular telephone conversations with Lippold and a U.S. military attache in Yemen. It stated that an explosion had occurred onboard the Cole while it was refueling and that the blast "immediately followed impact" by a small boat. That report made no mention of the mooring operation, a senior Navy official said. The second report, filed two and a half hours later, gave an account of another conversation with Lippold. It said the small boat with two men aboard had been used to tie up mooring lines, the senior official said.

"We have no clarity about what happened on the scene other than this cryptic report," Smith said. The investigation is now in the hands of the FBI, and the Navy does not know whether Lippold's remarks were accurately related in the reports. If they were accurate, the Navy does not know his basis for stating that the small boat had taken part in the mooring operation, Smith said.

What is clear is that, contrary to the Navy's previous assertions, the attackers did not use the mooring operation as a cover for approaching the ship. Even if it had helped tie up the Cole earlier, the boat was not taking part in harbor operations when the explosion occurred.

The Navy revised its account of the bombing in response to an inquiry by Navy Times, a Gannett Co. publication, which said it had received information from a "source associated with the Port of Aden" contradicting the Navy's chronology.

Originally, the Navy said the attack occurred at 12:15 p.m. local time (5:15 a.m. EDT) while the Cole was mooring and well before it had a chance to start taking on fuel. According to the new chronology, the Cole had completed mooring operations by 9:30 a.m. local time. Refueling operations began approximately an hour later and were still underway when the explosion occurred at 11:18 a.m.

Yesterday in Aden, American officials said that with all the bodies removed from the wreckage, salvage crews could proceed with patching the Cole to make it sufficiently seaworthy to be moved from the harbor to deeper waters and then loaded on a massive transport ship, the Norwegian-owned Blue Marlin, for a return voyage to the United States. The transport vessel is expected to arrive in Aden from Dubai within 10 days, officials said.

"Things are are moving ahead of schedule, better than we could have thought," said Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr., commander of the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, who visited Aden yesterday.

During a visit to the Cole, Moore joined a weary crew at an on-deck picnic of hotdogs, hamburgers and ice cream. He also participated in a ceremony for two sailors who had chosen to reenlist since the bombing. "To have gone through that and to decide to continue serving is a testimony to their commitment," Moore said.

The bodies of the last sailors recovered from inside the mangled metal of the Cole were dispatched yesterday on a C-130 transport plane to Bahrain, the first stop on a journey to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

In a brief ceremony at Aden airport, on an airstrip dark but for television lights, Navy pallbearers in white uniforms carried the flag-draped caskets one by one along a red carpet, past a six-man Marine honor guard and up a ramp into the belly of the plane. U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara K. Bodine stood at attention at the far end of the red carpet, joined by two Yemeni colonels. The only sound was the rumble of a generator in the distance and the repeated order to salute.

Sipress reported from Aden.

Last of slain Cole sailors arrive home

Sailors carry one of four flag-draped caskets onto a U.S. military transport before departure to Dover, Delaware

Bombed ship being made seaworthy for towing October 20, 2000 Web posted at: 6:03 p.m. EDT (2203 GMT)

------In this story:

More bodies return to the U.S.

Circumstantial bin Laden link

Threat to U.S. on videotape

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Correspondents Walter Rodgers, Matthew Chance, Mike Boettcher, Carl Rochelle and National Security Producer Chris Plante contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris.

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- As the last of the bodies removed from the bombed USS Cole arrived home Friday, the ship's crew focused on repairs and investigators in Yemen kept up their search for clues in the explosion that killed 17 Americans.

Sailors were engaged full-time in repairing areas of the destroyer torn apart last week when the ship arrived in Aden harbor to refuel. VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher reports on a videotape that may contain clues to the USS Cole bombing

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------Watch CNN's interview with Saleh

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------

CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports the ship's commander commends sailors' actions in a video sent to their families (October 18)

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

AUDIO FBI Director Louis Freeh, speaking at a news conference Thursday, says he is pleased with the progress of the Yemen investigation

431 K/40 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

------

FBI Director Louis Freeh arrived in Yemen on Thursday and toured the bomb- damaged USS Cole

600 K/57 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

TRANSCRIPT FBI Director Louis Freeh news conference on USS Cole Investigation in Aden, Yemen

GALLERIES Images from Wednesday's memorial services

USS Cole wounded return home

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

The work -- on a 40-foot by 40-foot hole in the Cole's hull -- is to make the Cole seaworthy enough to move into deeper water where it will be loaded onto a dry-dock vessel, the Blue Marlin, which will carry the crippled warship back to the United States. The Blue Marlin, a Norwegian ship contracted by the Navy, is expected in Aden from Dubai by the end of the month. A senior U.S. official said divers were still retrieving evidence from the seabed and damaged areas of the destroyer. That part of the onboard investigation had been a secondary priority until all human remains were recovered.

Among the tasks for the investigators: looking for residue that could indicate the type of explosives.

Samples taken from the destroyer are being sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis.

More bodies return to the U.S. A U.S. military plane carrying the remains of eight Cole sailors arrived Friday evening at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. A private memorial service for family members will be held at the base.

Earlier in Yemen, a Marine honor guard saluted as sailors carried four flag-draped caskets onto another U.S. military transport before its departure, also for Dover, where the U.S. military has a mortuary.

The four bodies, located amid the Cole's wreckage on Thursday, are the last to be repatriated.

Five other bodies were flown back to the United States last week. One of the sailors in that group, Cherone Louis Gunn, will be buried Friday in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The October 12 blast also injured 39 sailors. Two of them remain hospitalized in Germany; the others have returned to United States.

Circumstantial bin Laden link Investigators believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat packed with explosives next to the Cole and then detonated it as they stood at attention.

It's believed they are the same two men who rented a house on the outskirts of Aden where bomb-making material was later found. "They talked like Saudis," said one neighbor.

The house, shielded from public view by a high, corrugated metal screen, is where investigators suspect the boat bomb was built before it was hauled by trailer for launching at a boat ramp a short distance away.

Among the many people questioned in the case are the landlord of the apartment and a real estate agent who found it for the men.

No one has been charged with a crime.

Yemen's president has described the perpetrators as "elements from al-Jihad returning from Afghanistan." The reference is to Egyptian Islamic Jihad (holy war) whose leader, Ayman al- Zawahiri, is a close associate of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Both men are known to be in Afghanistan.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in an interview with CNN Thursday, said "maybe" when asked if bin Laden was behind the attack on the USS Cole.

The United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

But no one has publicly announced him as a suspect in the Yemen attack and the Taliban militia that rules Afghanistan denied this week that bin Laden was responsible for it.

Threat to U.S. on videotape Al-Zawahiri appears with bin Laden on a videotape shown by the Middle East satellite network, al-Jazeera, about three weeks before the attack -- although U.S. intelligence officials tell CNN it is many months older than that.

The house, shielded from public view, is where investigators suspect the boat bomb was built

The newspaper also reported that U.S. warships visited Aden two dozen times even though there had been no security reviews of local harbor workers and Yemen's coast was known to be susceptible to entry by terrorists.

Last of slain Cole sailors arrive home

Sailors carry one of four flag-draped caskets onto a U.S. military transport before departure to Dover, Delaware

Bombed ship being made seaworthy for towing October 20, 2000 Web posted at: 6:03 p.m. EDT (2203 GMT)

------In this story:

More bodies return to the U.S.

Circumstantial bin Laden link

Threat to U.S. on videotape

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Correspondents Walter Rodgers, Matthew Chance, Mike Boettcher, Carl Rochelle and National Security Producer Chris Plante contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris.

Sailors were engaged full-time in repairing areas of the destroyer torn apart last week when the ship arrived in Aden harbor to refuel.

VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher reports on a videotape that may contain clues to the USS Cole bombing

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------Watch CNN's interview with Saleh

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------

CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports the ship's commander commends sailors' actions in a video sent to their families (October 18)

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

AUDIO FBI Director Louis Freeh, speaking at a news conference Thursday, says he is pleased with the progress of the Yemen investigation

431 K/40 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

------

FBI Director Louis Freeh arrived in Yemen on Thursday and toured the bomb- damaged USS Cole

600 K/57 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

TRANSCRIPT FBI Director Louis Freeh news conference on USS Cole Investigation in Aden, Yemen

GALLERIES Images from Wednesday's memorial services

USS Cole wounded return home

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole ------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

A senior U.S. official said divers were still retrieving evidence from the seabed and damaged areas of the destroyer. That part of the onboard investigation had been a secondary priority until all human remains were recovered.

Among the tasks for the investigators: looking for residue that could indicate the type of explosives.

Samples taken from the destroyer are being sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis.

The four bodies, located amid the Cole's wreckage on Thursday, are the last to be repatriated. Five other bodies were flown back to the United States last week. One of the sailors in that group, Cherone Louis Gunn, will be buried Friday in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The October 12 blast also injured 39 sailors. Two of them remain hospitalized in Germany; the others have returned to United States.

Circumstantial bin Laden link Investigators believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat packed with explosives next to the Cole and then detonated it as they stood at attention.

It's believed they are the same two men who rented a house on the outskirts of Aden where bomb-making material was later found. "They talked like Saudis," said one neighbor.

Among the many people questioned in the case are the landlord of the apartment and a real estate agent who found it for the men.

No one has been charged with a crime.

Yemen's president has described the perpetrators as "elements from al-Jihad returning from Afghanistan."

The reference is to Egyptian Islamic Jihad (holy war) whose leader, Ayman al- Zawahiri, is a close associate of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Both men are known to be in Afghanistan.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in an interview with CNN Thursday, said "maybe" when asked if bin Laden was behind the attack on the USS Cole.

The United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

But no one has publicly announced him as a suspect in the Yemen attack and the Taliban militia that rules Afghanistan denied this week that bin Laden was responsible for it.

The house, shielded from public view, is where investigators suspect the boat bomb was built

All Yemen blast bodies retrieved

A memorial service was held in Virginia on Wednesday

Divers have recovered the last four bodies of the 17 US sailors killed in an attack on the warship, the USS Cole, in Yemen last Thursday. "We believe all Cole sailors are now accounted for pending final identification," Rear- Admiral Mark Fitzgerald said.

One witness said the accent was a Saudi accent... They may be Yemenis or other Arabs

President Ali Abullah Saleh The announcement came after the head of the FBI, Louis Freeh, visited the port of Aden as investigations into the bombing continued.

But after talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Mr Freeh said the US still had no clear idea who carried out the attack, in which a small boat packed with explosives blew a hole in the side of the destroyer.

Earlier, President Saleh said more had been discovered about the identity of the attackers. He said two men, seen in a small boat next to the USS Cole before the blast, were Arabs who had used explosives found only in two Arab countries. His comments came as a former CIA counter-terrorism chief, Vincent Cannistraro, suggested that the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden could have planned the attack with help from Iraq.

Mr bin Laden issued his first statement for two years on Tuesday, vowing to continue his battle against "the enemies of Islam".

Photograph

On Monday, US and Yemeni investigators found bomb-making equipment in an empty apartment in Aden. President Saleh said they had now found a car used by the bombers, and the launcher that lowered their boat into the water.

The hunt for clues goes on

"The boat came from [the port of] Hodeidah, the engine came from Aden," he told Qatar's satellite television, al-Jazeera.

Asked about media reports that the two men were Saudi nationals, he said: "One witness said the accent was a Saudi accent... They may be Yemenis or other Arabs."

The president said samples of explosives taken from the destroyer had been identified by US investigators as of a type available only in Israel, the USA, and two Arab countries, which he declined to name.

He said that the authorities had obtained a photograph of one of the bombers, as well as shreds of skin and clothing recovered from the scene.

Aden's Wary Welcome

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By Alan Sipress and David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writers Friday , October 20, 2000 ; Page A01

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 19 –– Nasr Awadi is slightly too young to remember when this port was a British imperial outpost. But the 30-year-old Yemeni sees trouble ahead: The sudden arrival of at least 2,000 U.S. Marines off Aden and the scores of FBI investigators who have come to town, he warns, could be the advance guard of a new foreign occupation.

"The longer they stay, the more problems there will be," said Awadi, a shopkeeper standing in the sultry Tawil marketplace with his back to the grubby but graceful stone facade of a building dating to colonial days. "It's okay for ordinary Americans to be here, but soldiers with guns, people won't like that. The religious Muslims won't like that."

As Americans stream into Aden to salvage, support and guard the crippled destroyer USS Cole and to investigate the apparent terrorist attack that killed 17 of its sailors a week ago today, they have created another highly visible--and controversial--presence in the sensitive Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf region.

American officials have tried to lower the visibility of the military and other U.S. personnel here, limiting them largely to two premier hotels and to U.S. Navy ships moored offshore. But about 3,000 service members are now aboard eight vessels, including the Cole, and more than 200 other Americans, primarily military, FBI and State Department personnel, are on assignment in this city of 420,000.

Already, Yemenis around the country have started saying that the Aden Hotel, the headquarters for U.S. officials, has become an American military base. While the outside of the hotel is guarded by Yemeni soldiers carrying assault rifles and perched atop Land Rovers mounted with weapons, the upper floors are protected by U.S. Marines wearing bulletproof vests and cradling M-16s. In the lobby, plainclothes Yemeni security officers keep vigil, but upstairs Marines with sidearms ramble through the halls.

U.S. officials say resentment over U.S. military presence in the region, particularly since the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, may have led to the bombing of the Cole in the first place. They suspect the attack may have been the work of the exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who has vowed to drive Americans out of the area. Even before the attack, Yemeni opposition politicians and newspapers had accused the United States of covertly trying to establish military bases in Aden and on the Yemeni island of Socotra, about 550 miles to the east off the Horn of Africa.

American military officials said their relationship with Yemen is limited to an agreement signed last year for U.S. Navy vessels to refuel and resupply in Aden, and that the influx of U.S. personnel is only an emergency response to the Cole bombing. But in a place that lived under British rule from 1839 until 1967, that has not stopped people from worrying. "Some people feel the coming of a lot of Americans offends the sovereignty of this country. If they stay here for a long time, people will start gossiping and people in the opposition will think the Yemeni government has given military facilities to the Americans," said Mohammed Hatem Qadhi, managing editor of the Yemen Times.

American officials have tried to assuage Yemeni fears, saying U.S. military forces are meant only to provide support to the Cole operations; for instance, Navy divers today recovered the last four bodies from the destroyer's damaged area. Likewise, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, during a visit to Aden today, said the Yemeni government has taken the lead in the probe of the bombing, with Americans as a "junior partner."

After meeting with Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih and touring the Cole, Freeh said at a news conference: "The FBI presence here is a very temporary one. It is one that is under the complete direction of the local authorities who are in charge of the case. We do not take any action or any steps without their knowledge, without their permission."

Standing beside Freeh was the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Barbara K. Bodine, who earlier pressed for a limit of 15 people in the FBI contingent, according to a federal official who attended a State Department meeting dealing with Middle Eastern affairs. But Bodine, a former acting coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, lost that behind-the-scenes debate with the FBI despite her concern that sending more than 100 investigators would be seen as excessive.

In a statement this week, Bodine said she does not object to the size of the American presence and that it suits the twin missions of supporting the Cole and probing the attack. "We're not really concerned about a backlash here in Yemen," she said. "There are obviously [hostile] elements here, but this is not a hostile environment."

But only minutes from the Aden Hotel, crouching beside a canvas sack teeming with dried chili peppers on a shaded street corner in a beaten-down neighborhood suitably called Crater, a Yemeni mechanic named Fayyed Ali was less upbeat. "I'm worried about the huge number of Americans," he said. "There are all these Americans coming and we have no idea what's going on."

Western faces are rare on the narrow streets of Crater, where aging Toyotas and Mazdas, bruised and bent, fight for the rutted pavement with men in traditional skirt- like clothing and women in black robes, their faces often totally concealed. Nor are Americans commonly seen along the main boulevard in the Maalla neighborhood, from which cranes from the port where U.S. warships call are visible above five- and seven-story apartment buildings.

"We're all talking about the huge presence of American troops and American military equipment," said an engineer in Maalla named Nabil. "We're concerned."

Other Yemenis, however, remain hospitable. Ahmed Muqbil, an elderly pharmacist returning from afternoon prayer at the corner mosque, said, "You are all welcome. Consider this your second country." But signs of Yemeni skepticism are apparent in the press. One independent paper, An- Nass, published its account this week of the Cole investigation under the headline: "In what seems to be American occupation of Bab al-Mandab," referring to the strait between Yemen and Africa at the mouth of the Red Sea.

Salih bristled Wednesday evening in a television interview when he was asked whether the United States has designs on Yemen. "The Americans have come to save their vessel and therefore it is not colonialism or occupation," he told the Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera. "They are not happy to come, but we welcome them. . . . They are guests that have come to fix their vessel and could leave in two or three days or a week, I understand."

He said the Americans came at Yemeni invitation, rejecting suggestions that Marines have surrounded the country. He said U.S. ships have taken up locations designated by the Yemeni government and that U.S. helicopters can fly only with Yemeni approval.

In his interview, Salih also provided new details about the probe. He said a 12-year- old boy has provided a crucial tip, telling Yemeni investigators that a bearded man with glasses gave him change and asked him to watch a car parked near the port on the day of the attack. The man then reportedly took a rubber boat off the top of the car and headed into the harbor, never returning.

The abandoned car led investigators to a modest house, tucked behind a cinderblock wall, in the Madinet Ash-Shaab suburb of Aden several blocks from the sea, according to reports here. That is where Yemeni and American investigators said they discovered bomb-making material, and where two men believed linked to the attack were staying.

Both men have disappeared. In a separate interview with CNN today, Salih said some suspects detained by authorities here belong to an Egyptian-based group, al-Jihad. Its leader, Ayman Zawahiri, is a bin Laden associate who, like bin Laden, is reported to be in Afghanistan.

An independent Yemeni paper, Al-Ayyam, has reported that two men had parked a fiberglass boat in a driveway. That boat is now missing. If either this vessel or the rubber boat was used in the attack, it could mean that the explosion was not detonated by a harbor work boat, as initially suspected.

Investigators have widened their probe to the Yemeni province of Hadramaut after tracing the car and documents in the house to that often lawless eastern region, Yemeni security officials said. They also have sent a team of investigators to Saudi Arabia, according to the Associated Press.

Despite local concerns about the degree of FBI involvement in the probe, Yemeni police interrogating more than 100 local residents have been asking questions submitted by the FBI and sharing the results of their interrogations, sources said. In addition, the Yemeni government has permitted agents to examine the crime scene and made special arrangements for U.S. officials in Yemen to have access to communications equipment and other facilities, sources said. Evidence, including traces of explosive on the destroyer, are being sent to the United States for FBI lab analysis to determine the kind of bomb. "It looks sophisticated," one U.S. official said of the explosives, based on preliminary analysis.

Some members of the House of Representatives have suggested withholding foreign aid payments to Yemen to encourage cooperation. But Clinton administration officials said this could undermine the working relationships that have developed in recent days. Several U.S. officials contrasted the Yemeni government's openness to the difficulties faced by U.S. investigators in Saudi Arabia following the 1996 Khobar Towers apartment building bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee, said delaying any payments to Yemen would be a gross mistake, adding that Yemeni officials have given Bodine "prompt and productive" information. "They are doing everything we are asking them to do," Levin said. "To act as though we need to pressure them to do something would be . . . disheartening."

To reduce any renewed threat to Americans, the Navy has dispatched an amphibious ready group to Aden to serve as an offshore base. The arrival Monday of this group, which includes a helicopter carrier and two other ships, offers communications, housing and other facilities, allowing U.S. officials to reduce their "footprint" in the city.

But some Yemenis were skeptical that shifting U.S. soldiers and personnel out of hotels would stem the growth of local resentment as weeks pass. "If they are in the general port, some people will still think it's an American military base," said Qadhi. "It doesn't matter if they're on the land or on the sea."

Vise reported from Washington. Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.

General Defends Decision to Refuel in Yemen

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By David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Friday , October 20, 2000 ; Page A26

The former Marine general who arranged for U.S. warships to refuel in Yemen defended his decision before a Senate panel yesterday, saying all the ports in the region are "rats' nests . . . for terrorists."

In the first hearing on the terrorist attack last week that left 17 sailors dead, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Yemeni coast was a "sieve" for terrorists but said its port at Aden was the best place to refuel among a number of undesirable options.

Zinni, who headed the Central Command when the contract to refuel Navy ships at Aden was negotiated in 1998, said some previously scheduled refueling stops at the Yemeni port had been canceled due to terrorist threats.

But he said the United States needs to maintain a presence in the Persian Gulf to protect the economy in a region that produces more than half the world's oil. Zinni personally took responsibility for the decision to refuel at Aden, although he said it had been made in close consultation with security and intelligence officials.

"I pass that buck on to nobody," Zinni said. "The threat conditions in Aden were better than elsewhere . . . Sudan? Obviously not. Saudi Arabia? Back in 1997, when we were making this decision, we had just had two bombings in Saudi Arabia. We lost 24 people."

A small boat carrying powerful explosives blew a giant hole in the USS Cole as it refueled in the Aden harbor last week, killing 17 sailors, injuring three dozen and leaving lingering questions about protection of military personnel abroad.

Although the State Department recently reported that Yemen remains a haven for terrorists, Zinni said he is convinced the Yemeni government wants to work with the United States to combat terrorism. He said he had not compromised security considerations in a bid to improve relations with Yemen, but argued that it was important to work with Yemen so that it does not become as problematic for the United States as nations such as Afghanistan, where Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, a prime suspect in last week's attack, is sheltered.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the families of crew members who died or were injured in the blast have repeatedly asked him about the Navy's decision to refuel a ship in a place teeming with terrorists.

"The one question I keep hearing from the families of the crew of the USS Cole is, 'Why Yemen? Why Yemen, when there are continuing State Department travel warnings in effect for that country? Why Yemen, when the annual State Department report on global terrorism, issued in April 2000, stated that the [Yemeni] government's inability to exercise authority over remote areas of the country continued to make the country a safe haven for terrorist groups?' "

In response to questions, Zinni said cuts in the size of the Navy's fleet had led to a major reduction in the number of oil tankers that could be used to refuel at sea. "Ten years ago we did all refueling at sea," he said. But Zinni also said it was impossible for Navy ships in the region not to head into port occasionally to refuel, make repairs and replenish supplies.

Zinni met with skepticism from some members of the Senate panel, who asked why better security arrangements weren't made for the Cole and sought suggestions for improvements in the protection of military personnel abroad.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said intelligence information showed refueling in Yemen posed enormous risk, data that weren't utilized properly in the decision to refuel at Aden.

"I have a chart here that's unclassified," Roberts said. "This is a summary of the threat level. . . . If you look at orange, you see Yemen, and it is very high. And you look at Djibouti, and it is green; it is very low. That threat assessment is about two inches thick, with a lot of red flags in it, for over a year. Those are the questions that . . . we have to answer, as to why this information was not provided in the proper way to the proper people in regard to the USS Cole."

Zinni said the threat assessment Roberts displayed was a measure of risk at a given moment.

"That's a snapshot in time," Zinni said. "Those threat levels go up and down. . . . Aden never had a specific terrorist threat."

Zinni also said that even if all Navy warships were refueled by oil tankers at sea, determined terrorists simply would find another way to carry out attacks.

He also warned that the U.S. military is woefully unprepared for the possibility of a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction that are far more lethal than the explosives used in last week's attack.

"We will eventually see a weapon of mass destruction used in a terrorist act," Zinni said. "And I would just say that we had better start thinking about how we're going to be prepared for that."

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary William Cohen appointed a panel to determine "lessons learned" from the attack. The panel will be chaired by retired Army Gen. William Crouch, former vice chief of staff of the Army, and Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, former commander-in-chief of the joint command for military forces based in the continental United States.

The review will include scrutiny of the decisions that led to refueling the Cole at Aden, including intelligence warnings that a Navy warship could be a target of a terrorist attack. "As the FBI investigation continues, we'll learn more about what happened," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon.

Iraq-Bin Laden boat bomb link

USS Cole: 17 dead mourned as experts piece together attack

Special report: Israel and the Middle East Special report: Iraq

Julian Borger in Washington Thursday October 19, 2000

Investigators in Yemen yesterday uncovered evidence suggesting the bomb attack on the warship USS Cole had been a meticulously organised conspiracy, which a leading US terrorism expert said may have been the first joint operation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Under an overcast sky at the Norfolk naval base in Virginia, President Clinton led thousands of US servicemen in mourning the 17 victims of last week's blast, as the state department warned that more attacks against US citizens could be on the way in the Middle East or Turkey.

In Aden, Yemeni police and FBI agents were examining a flat apparently rented by the bomb makers four days before the attack. Bomb-making materials were found in the flat, which was rented by two non-Yemeni Arabs, at least one of whom had a Gulf accent, local residents said. They kept a fibre glass boat parked nearby.

It was not clear whether the missing suspects were the two men who manoeuvred their small boat alongside the USS Cole and blew themselves up, or whether they were technicians spirited out of the country after the attack.

Paying tribute to the Cole victims, Mr Clinton said: "To those who attacked them we say: You will not find a safe harbour. We will find you and justice will prevail. America will not stop standing guard for peace, for freedom or stability in the Middle East or around the world."

Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorist operations and a respected expert on Middle Eastern terrorism, said the timing, location and method of the attack pointed to Bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda. He said it was the only group in the area which has issued a fatwa (a religiously inspired death sentence) against US and British citizens.

Bin Laden, a Saudi national based in Afghanistan, has Yemeni family roots and close links with some of the local tribal warlords. A few weeks before the attack, he distributed a video in which he issued familiar calls for a holy war against the "forces of evil". He was wearing Yemeni tribal costume and a Yemeni dagger.

"He's puckish like that. On one hand he does not want to give out his address, but on the other hand, he likes to let his followers know he is leading the fight," Mr Cannistraro said.

He argued that the sophistication of the bomb - an estimated 272kg of high explosive shaped and placed within a metal container to channel the blast and penetrate the armoured hull of the USS Cole - suggested the involvement of a state.

"The Iraqis have wanted to be able to carry out terrorism for some time now," Mr Cannistraro said. "Their military people have had liaison with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and could well have supplied the training."

He said the theory was still speculative but was consistent with the series of recent contacts between Baghdad and the Bin Laden organisation.

Harvey Kushner, a terrorism expert at Long Island University, said there was reason to believe Bin Laden had been investigating ways of launching attacks by sea. "He's been looking around for small, personal submarines. One of his relatives in the United States had an order in for one of these personal submarines, and it was stopped," Mr Kushner said.

Other terrorism experts agreed the boat bomb was a significant technical advance on earlier terrorist attacks, such as the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years ago.

The bodies of six of the US sailors killed in the blast were still being extracted from the wreckage left by the blast, which punched a 12-metre hole in the ship.

Investigators in Aden were studying video surveillance tapes of the port from the hours leading up to the attack.

Saleh says break is near in Cole case

Forensics experts paddle through the blast hole and float inside the USS Cole

WEB EXCLUSIVE On the scene with CNN's Jamie McIntyre on Capitol Hill ------On the scene with CNN's Nic Robertson in Afghanistan

Yemen president hints at bin Laden tie to attack on Cole October 19, 2000 Web posted at: 10:28 p.m. EDT (0228 GMT)

------In this story:

FBI chief visits Cole, won't talk about suspects

Independent Pentagon probe planned

Ex-military leader: Yemen was acceptable risk for refueling

Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri background

RELATED STORIES, SITES

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CNN Correspondents Walter Rodgers, Matthew Chance, Nic Robertson, Carl Rochelle, Deborah Feyerick, National Security Producer Chris Plante and Justice Department Producer Terry Frieden contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris.

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- Yemen's president said Thursday he expects a break in the USS Cole investigation within a week.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh told CNN that suspects arrested by authorities in his country are members of a group whose leader is a close associate of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher reports on a videotape that may contain clues to the USS Cole bombing

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------Watch CNN's interview with Saleh

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CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports the ship's commander commends sailors' actions in a video sent to their families (October 18)

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

AUDIO FBI Director Louis Freeh, speaking at a news conference Thursday, says he is pleased with the progress of the Yemen investigation

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FBI Director Louis Freeh arrived in Yemen on Thursday and toured the bomb- damaged USS Cole

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TRANSCRIPT FBI Director Louis Freeh news conference on USS Cole Investigation in Aden, Yemen

GALLERIES Images from Wednesday's memorial services

USS Cole wounded return home

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

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------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

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------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

He described suspects that Yemen has arrested as "elements from al-Jihad returning from Afghanistan."

Al-Jihad (holy war) is an Egyptian-based group whose leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is said to be bin Laden's second-in-command. Both men are known to be in Afghanistan.

Saleh was asked by CNN if bin Laden was responsible for the deadly bombing one week ago in Aden harbor that also injured 39 sailors and left a gaping hole in the destroyer. His reply: "It could be. It could be."

Meanwhile, the Navy said Thursday that it had recovered the final four bodies trapped in the wreckage of the destroyer bombed in Yemen one week ago, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

FBI chief visits Cole, won't talk about suspects FBI Director Louis Freeh, who arrived in Yemen on Thursday and met with Saleh, did not confirm or deny a possible bin Laden link, saying it was too early in the investigation to place blame for the bombing.

"I must stress that we are very, very far at this point from making any judgment on sponsorship," he told reporters at a news conference in Aden.

Freeh would say only that he is "pleased with progress" being made in the investigation. He also described the United States as a "junior partner" in a joint effort being led by Yemen.

Dozens of FBI and CIA experts are in Aden to investigate the attack in which a small boat pulled alongside the destroyer as it was mooring for refueling and exploded, ripping a 40-foot-by-40-foot hole in the Cole's hull.

The FBI director, who went aboard the Cole, said he saw "catastrophic damage." He described the crime scene as a "tangled mess of metal and wire."

Freeh said the pace of the onboard search for clues would quicken once all the bodies were recovered. "The priority has been the identification and the removal of human remains," he said.

Hours later, the Navy announced that the final four bodies had been recovered.

Eight bodies removed earlier from the wreckage are expected to arrive Friday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the U.S. military has a mortuary facility.

The four bodies recovered Thursday are expected to follow aboard a second airplane, according to a Navy official.

Five bodies recovered last week already have been flown back to the United States.

Independent Pentagon probe A retired Navy admiral and a retired Army general will head an independent investigation of security on the USS Cole at the time the ship was attacked.

The Pentagon announced Thursday that Defense Secretary William Cohen had requested that the probe be led by Adm. Harold W. Gehman , who retired this summer as commander in chief of U.S. Joint Forces Command, and Gen. William Crouch , who retired in 1999 as Army deputy chief of staff.

Their investigation will examine the circumstances at the time of the bombing and assess ways in which standard security precautions during visits to international ports can be improved.

"Their job is to distill the lessons learned so that we can improve our force protection (and) reduce the chances that we will be subject to another terrorist attack like this," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. The probe will be independent of the FBI's ongoing investigation of who carried out the attack in Aden, near the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Ex-military leader: Yemen was acceptable risk for refueling The general who arranged for U.S. warships to refuel in Yemen vigorously defended his decision during questioning by senators Thursday.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh during a CNN interview Thursday

Gen. Anthony Zinni, recently retired as regional commander for the Middle East, said the Yemeni port of Aden was selected in 1997 as the best option from a list of insecure places to fuel ships in one of the region's most strategic points.

"The threat conditions in Aden were better than elsewhere," Zinni told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He said the United States had been helping the Yemen government fight "terrorist" groups and was building better relations with the strategically placed former Soviet ally.

Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri background The United States accuses bin Laden and his organization al Qaida of organizing a worldwide terrorist network out of Afghanistan.

Since the attack, officials in Afghanistan and newspapers in neighboring Pakistan have repeatedly warned of a possible U.S. retaliatory strike against Afghanistan.

Although there are no apparent signs that Washington is planning a strike, Afghans remember August 1998, when the United States fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles on eastern Afghanistan in an attempt to kill bin Laden.

That assault was in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people. Washington blamed bin Laden for the attacks, and a U.S. grand jury has since indicted both him and al-Zawahiri.

Osama bin Laden, right, and Ayman al-Zawahiri during a 1998 news conference in Afghanistan

Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician who has lived in Afghanistan for several years, has urged Muslims worldwide to attack U.S. and Israeli targets to avenge the deaths of Palestinians killed in recent clashes with Israel.

He was found guilty in absentia of the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Al-Jihad has been blamed for numerous attacks on Western tourists and public figures in Egypt. The group's spiritual leader is Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Islamic cleric serving a life sentence in the United States for terrorism involving an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks.

Bin Laden has been living in Afghanistan since 1996, when he fled Sudan. The Taliban militia that rules the country has refused to hand him over and this week denied he was responsible for the Yemen attack.

October 19, 2000 Cole's leaders, still in Yemen, send message home by video

NORFOLK -- For six days they directed efforts to save their stricken ship and to recover the dead and wounded.

Early Wednesday, the commanding officer and the command master chief of the guided-missile destroyer Cole, both dressed in blue work coveralls, delivered a message to families and friends gathered for a memorial service back home.

The message was taped Monday aboard ship, against a backdrop of bleak gray-brown hills that surround the Yemeni port of Aden.

Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, the Cole's skipper, noted then that ``even today we're working in some below-deck spaces to maintain the watertight integrity of the ship.''

The Cole was rocked and crippled by a suicide attack just before noon last Thursday.

``When the explosion occurred,'' said Lippold, ``the immediate actions of the crew saved this ship, and saved the lives of many, many of the crew members onboard.

``The courageousness that was shown by them is unbelievable. They have worked non-stop since then.

``You can be proud of every single sailor aboard this ship. They have done their part now; they have done their part every single minute since it happened, and I know that they'll continue to do it.''

Command Master Chief James G. Parlier, the destroyer's senior enlisted sailor, echoed the praise of his skipper for the crew, traumatized and exhausted, who saved the ship. ``I'm proud of every sailor here,'' said Parlier. ``They've done an outstanding . . . no, they've been heroic, in everything they've done.

``I've stood by their side during the whole tragedy. I was just amazed, in all my years as a corpsman, how these people came through in saving sailors, assisting me in saving the ship, and their damage-control knowledge. They went well beyond what they were expected to do and more. I would serve again anywhere with these sailors; I am so proud. And you need to be proud.''

One of those back home who was particularly proud was Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, who at the memorial service Wednesday praised the 240 men and women who escaped death or injury and stuck with the Cole.

``The 240 who absorbed the shock of the explosion . . . who saw the death of 17, the injury of two score . . . but who turned to and fought on . . . fought together for the ship and for their shipmates,'' Danzig said.

``For two days and two nights, they fought under the most extreme conditions: blood, bent and broken steel, flooding, uncertainty and danger.

``They saved their ship . . . their injured -- every one of them -- and each other.

``And then their generators failed, the waters rose and they had to do it all over again. Waist-deep in water, manning bucket brigades by hand, they did it again.''

Without power for its pumps, water levels rose inside the Cole on Saturday night, flooding refrigerator decks, an engineering space and other areas.

The crew stabilized the Cole a second time early Sunday.

Both Lippold and Parlier spoke warmly of the emotional support the Cole has received from home.

Said Lippold: ``The outpouring of support that we have received from back home, from the phone calls to the e-mails we've been receiving, have been absolutely phenomenal. And please keep them up. I highly encourage you to do it, because it means more than you know when you get those special messages from home.

President Clinton waits on the temporary stage on Pier 12 at the Norfolk Naval Station as he prepares to address the thousands of gathered Navy personnel and family members. More photos. Photo by Bill Tiernan / The Virginian-Pilot. NORFOLK -- On a dreary day when sailors and Marines gathered to honor the dead and injured from the destroyer Cole, the nation's leaders served notice that America will not rest until those responsible are punished.

``To those who attacked them we say: You will not find a safe harbor,'' a somber President Clinton promised. ``We will find you, and justice will prevail.''

A crowd of more than 15,000 turned out in the misty morning for the memorial service on Pier 12 at the Norfolk Naval Station.

It included injured Cole crew members, some on hospital beds, and the relatives of the 17 who were killed.

``To those who organized and orchestrated this barbarous act,'' Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said, ``you are on notice that our search for you will be relentless, and that America will not rest until we find you and the long arm of justice reaches out -- however long, however far -- and makes you pay for this crime.''

Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that ``America's memory is long and our reach longer.''

And Adm. Robert J. Natter, commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet, echoed the phrase that launched the Spanish-American War.

``Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen,'' Natter said. ``When it comes time for our response, remember the Cole.''

While the warnings were direct and strong, the messages of sorrow for the dead and injured were eloquent, and were appreciated by the relatives of Cole crew members attending the Norfolk Naval Station ceremony.

Many of the relatives showed the strains of a full week of mourning. They hugged one another, wore blue and gold ribbons, held hands tightly and cried through one tribute after another.

As salvage workers in Yemen quietly probed the Cole's wreckage for missing crew members this week, giving families hope that all 17 will be recovered, the remaining 240-member crew worked feverishly to keep the ship afloat.

It was a week ago today that a small harbor work boat came alongside the Norfolk- based guided-missile destroyer as it entered port at Aden, Yemen, for fuel. Pretending to help the Cole with mooring lines, the boat -- with at least two men aboard -- nestled next to the destroyer's port side, nearly in the center of the hull. The men reportedly saluted, then detonated a boatload of explosives that shattered the 4- year-old warship, leaving a 40-by-40-foot hole in its side.

In addition to the 17 killed, another 39 sailors were injured.

Thirty-six of the injured -- bandaged, some in casts, on crutches, holding canes -- attended the memorial service, held between the carrier Eisenhower and destroyers Ross and McFaul, sister ships to the Cole. Two of the most seriously injured sailors remained hospitalized in Germany; another who underwent surgery Tuesday night at the naval hospital in Portsmouth was not able to attend.

The victims met with Clinton privately before the ceremony, along with 85 family members who gathered in the Pennsylvania House on Admiral's Row.

Seven of the wounded watched the ceremony from stretchers and wheelchairs parked at the front of the crowd, adjacent to the president and his military chiefs.

When the injured sailors arrived, in seven separate ambulances, the crowd stood, applauded and saluted each one. The patients, most in dress white uniforms patched together for them overnight by tailors at the naval hospital, waved and saluted back.

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea attended the memorial along with senior House and Senate members, including Sens. John W. Warner, Charles S. Robb and Edward M. Kennedy. Attorney General Janet Reno and other senior government leaders, including Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, were there.

Clinton, noting that all who spoke Wednesday were ``mindful of the limits of our poor words,'' said they were intended to lift the spirits and warm the hearts of those who need it.

``We . . . now have to pray for your children, your husbands, your wives, your brothers, your sisters, who were taken so young,'' he said.

``We know we will never know them as you did, or remember them as you will, the first time you saw them in uniform, or the last time you said goodbye.''

Their tragic loss, Clinton said, should remind the nation that while it is not at war, the military still is at risk.

``I am quite sure history will record in great detail our triumphs in battle, but I regret that no one will ever be able to write a full account of the wars we never fought, the losses we never suffered, the tears we never shed, because men and women like those who were on the USS Cole were standing guard for peace. We should never, ever forget that. ``Today, I ask all Americans just to take a moment to thank the men and women of our armed forces for a debt we can never repay, whose character and courage more than even modern weapons makes our military the strongest in the world,'' he said.

``And in particular, I ask us to thank God today for the lives, the character and courage of the crew of the USS Cole, including the wounded and especially those we lost or are missing.''

With that, Clinton somberly read the names of the 17 who gave their lives in the explosion.

So crowded was the pier that the 2,500 seats there were filled instantly. An announcement just before the ceremony called for all active-duty sailors and Marines to climb aboard the carrier Eisenhower, which they did by the hundreds.

Crew members still aboard the Cole weren't able to view the memorial on television, mainly because satellite communication with the ship was difficult to maintain, but also because the crew was hard at work keeping the ship afloat, Adm. Natter said before the memorial service.

``Today's ceremony reminds us that a joyful homecoming for our men and women who go down to the sea in ships can never be taken for granted,'' Natter told the crowd. ``They face the dangers of life at sea, and willingly so, for they recognize that there is no higher calling than that of service to our country. Today we gather and pause as a nation, as a Navy, and as a family to remember and honor our shipmates on the Cole.''

Navy Secretary Richard Danzig said that in other places, some people are treated as fodder, stepping stones, dispensable assets.

``We are not like that,'' he said. ``One of the reasons that I love America is because it loves its citizens.

``We grieve today. We see the 17 people who died on Oct. 12 as 17 wonders, 17 sons and daughters.

``We mourn brothers and sisters; mothers, fathers and those who will never be mothers and fathers; 17 unique people.

``We cherish them. We grieve because we couldn't protect them. Instead they died protecting us.''

Shelton, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said the Cole victims had become part of the ``family of patriots.''

At Arlington National Cemetery, said Shelton, there is an inscription that seemed appropriate: `` `Not for fame or reward. Not lured by ambition or goaded by necessity. But in simple obedience to duty as they understood it, these men suffered all, sacrificed all, and died.'

``The men and women of the USS Cole . . . truly understood this call to duty, this call to service and to America,'' he said.

Cohen, who told the crowd that ``it's impossible for us to cauterize the wound'' inflicted on the families and the country, said words seem too shallow to contain ``the depth of our sorrow, too thin to hold the pain of our loss and too measured to reflect the rage in our hearts.''

He reminded the nation that it sleeps safely at night because those who wear the uniform are prepared to give their life in defense of liberty.

``No one,'' Cohen said, ``no one should ever pass . . . an American in uniform without saying, `Thank you, we're grateful.' ''

Yemen makes progress in investigation of U.S destroyer explosion Yemen, Politics, 10/19/2000

The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said some progress was achieved in the investigations concerning the explosion of the U.S destroyer in Eden harbor in last week due to which 17 U.S of the crew members were killed.

Saleh said that the two men who implemented the operation were also killed, assuring that the Yemeni police knows now where the boat which hit the U.S destroyer was made, adding that the house in which the two men were hiding was found in Eden and it is known that they are Islamists seen praying before the attack.

He also said that the explosives used in the accident only exist in the U.S.A and in Israel as well as in two Arab states. yet he refused to name the states.

The US said that it is receiving good cooperation from Yemen in its investigation. October 19, 2000 Fleet Week ceremony pays tribute to Cole's sailors

PORTSMOUTH -- Bob Barfield may not wear a uniform, but when the Navy hurts, he bleeds.

Barfield was among about 150 people who turned out Wednesday evening for a Fleet Week tribute to the sailors who died last week in the terrorist attack on the Cole. Since 1967, he has worked for the Navy, helping to build ships, submarines and aircraft carriers. He came to Wednesday's ceremony to pay his respects.

``The Cole incident hurt me,'' he said. ``I work around these sailors and I have so much respect for them. For anyone to attack them is an attack on me.''

The short, open-to-the-public tribute preceded two previously scheduled Fleet Week events: a concert by the Atlantic Fleet Band and a demonstration by the Navy SEAL team.

After last week's attack, ``it just seemed appropriate'' to add the tribute, said Sheila Pittman, Portsmouth's director of citizen and community outreach.

David Shafer, command chaplain of Norfolk Naval Shipyard, prayed for the lives that were taken ``without reason and with malice.'' He read aloud the names of the 17 dead or missing men and women. For each, a bell was sounded by a sailor nearby.

There have been other tributes throughout Fleet Week, including one last Saturday at the dedication of the Navy's ``Homecoming'' statue in Town Point Park.

Fleet Week is somber this year because of the Cole tragedy, said Clyde W. Nordan Jr., 54, of Portsmouth, who attended Wednesday's event.

But showing respect is important, said Tim R. Heath, 28, of Arlington, who was in Norfolk on business. When flags fly at half-mast like they have been, Heath said it shows the U.S. government cares about the lives of its soldiers.

Heath said he has seen signs in South Hampton Roads restaurants expressing support for the Cole. But, there needs to be more of that, he said.

``The Navy, they're not separate from the civilians,'' he said. ``They are us.''

Pittman said she received calls from people throughout South Hampton Roads who wanted to attend the ceremony ``to show their appreciation for the Navy.'' The tragedy made people more aware of the risks military personnel face to defend the United States, Pittman said. Everyone in the area has some link to the military, Nordan said. Because the attack was during a time of peace, it will take a long time for the community to recover. And when the Cole returns to homeport, it will wreak havoc on residents' emotions all over again, he said.

``We survived the Persian Gulf and World War II and all the wars before that. But this is a little bit different,'' he said. ``It's just a hole in the side of a ship, but it has a big impact.''

Thursday, 19 October, 2000, 12:45 GMT 13:45 UK Yemen blast inquiry yields clues

Mourners at the memorial service for the dead US sailors

The President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has said that more is now known about the men who bombed a US warship in Aden last week, killing 17 US sailors.

One witness said the accent was a Saudi accent... They may be Yemenis or other Arabs

President Ali Abullah Saleh He said two men, seen in a small boat next to the USS Cole before the blast, were Arabs who used explosives found only in two Arab countries.

His comments came as a former CIA counter-terrorism chief, Vincent Cannistraro, suggested that the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden could have planned the attack with help from Iraq.

Mr bin Laden issued his first statement for two years on Tuesday, vowing to continue his battle against "the enemies of Islam".

Photograph

"The boat came from [the port of] Hodeidah, the engine came from Aden," he told Qatar's satellite television, al-Jazeera. Asked about media reports that the two men were Saudi nationals, he said: "One witness said the accent was a Saudi accent... They may be Yemenis or other Arabs."

He said that the authorities had obtained a photograph of one of the bombers, as well as shreds of skin and clothing recovered from the scene.

State involvement

The Iraqis have wanted to carry out terrorism for some time now

Ex-CIA counter-terrorism chief, Vincent Cannistraro Mr Cannistraro, an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism, said the attack bore the hallmarks of Mr bin Laden's group.

He said the sophistication of the device, placed in a metal container to concentrate the blast on the Cole's armoured hull, pointed to the involvement of a state.

"The Iraqis have wanted to carry out terrorism for some time now," he said, adding that the Iraqi military had been in contact with Mr bin Laden, and could have helped with training.

Mr bin Laden's family has Yemeni roots, and he recently distributed a video recording of himself in Yemeni tribal dress, calling for a holy war against the "forces of evil".

In his statement on Tuesday, he did not refer to the Cole attack - the deadliest on the US military since the 1996 bombing of an air force barracks in Saudi Arabia.

Retaliation

At a memorial service for the dead US sailors in Virginia on Wednesday, President Bill Clinton said those responsible for the attack would be brought to justice.

The US Defence Secretary, William Cohen, has vowed to take "appropriate action" once those responsible for the Cole deaths have been identified.

After the bombing of two US embassies in Africa in 1998 the US launched missile strikes against Mr bin Laden's base in Afghanistan.

In a separate development in Yemen, a member of a radical Islamic group has been arrested on suspicion of throwing a bomb into the British embassy compound.

The attack took place on Friday, the day after the bombing of the Cole. It shattered embassy windows but caused no injuries. Back to basics in fight against terrorism

As CIA hunts USS Cole culprits, critics call for greater focus on conventional risks.

By Justin Brown ([email protected]) Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON

In the wake of last week's attack that killed 17 Navy sailors, US agents are methodically sifting through the wreckage of the USS Cole, looking for any clue that will lead them to the alleged terrorist behind the explosion.

But the more telling challenge for the US could come in the next few years, as officials weigh the latest horror and consider how it should affect their strategy in the ongoing war against terrorism.

In essence, the disaster with the Cole is likely to point counter-terrorism efforts back to basics, analysts say - to conventional weapons, and to American targets outside the United States.

"Terrorist groups continue to use whatever [weapon] is easiest to use," says L. Paul Bremer, a former State Department official who this year chaired the National Commission on Terrorism. "They also know that it's easier to go after American targets overseas than it is in the US."

In the case of the USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer, investigators are looking into numerous terrorist groups located in and around Yemen, where the blast occurred. The probe took a major step forward this week when the Yemeni government acknowledged the explosion was indeed the product of terrorism. Officials also said they had found bomb-making materials in an apartment near Aden, the attack site.

STEPPED-UP WATCH: American flags fly at half mast at the US Embassy in Brussels Oct. 13. The US already spends $11 billion a year fighting terrorism. VIRGINIA MAYO/AP ------

While experts say that it would have been difficult to prevent the attack on the Cole under almost any circumstances, they also say the bombing points to areas where the US could improve its antiterrorism efforts - ranging from better intelligence gathering to redirecting resources toward conventional-weapons risks. To be sure, fighting terrorism is an inexact science, and the US record has been solid since the threat expanded at the cold war's end.

Spending on counterterrorism programs is up dramatically in recent years, to a high of $11.1 billion for fiscal year 2001. The number of US victims, meanwhile, dropped to just five in 1999. And no reported incidents darkened the Y2K calendar rollover, when law-enforcement officials said they prevented suspected terrorists from entering the US from Canada.

Unsavory informants?

Still, experts say better intelligence gathering will hold the key to preventing future disasters like the one involving the Cole.

Analysts complain that efforts have been hampered by a 1995 CIA directive that prevents agents from using informants who have been involved in human rights abuses - a condition that could apply to almost any informant within a terrorist ring.

"We are doing pretty well across a broad spectrum," says Mike Wermuth, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corp. in Washington. But "We've tended to hamstring ourselves ... by preventing [the use of] unsavory characters as insiders to infiltrate foreign terrorism organizations."

CIA officials say the new conditions yield sufficient - and higher quality - information.

Another area of debate is how money is allocated between preventing conventional attacks and preventing attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which include chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

WMD were brought to the world's attention by the March 1995 sarin gas attack in a Japanese subway - but since then have not come into play as much as some planners expected. "We spend too much on WMD terrorism," says John Parachini of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "While the threat probably is not zero, it's low."

He says WMD terrorism spending has doubled in the past three years, while resources for conventional threats are flat.

US concern about WMD increased after the Soviet Union fell, with the discovery of a larger-than-expected biological weapons program and heightened worry that Russia would lose control of its nuclear materials.

Yet, as the Cole proves, conventional explosives can do plenty of damage and are easy to use. New Middle East dynamic

Experts also warn that as America becomes more powerful, and exerts its will more often, it will attract greater resentment.

"The most immediate problem is with Israel," says Mr. Bremer. "For the first time in 50 years, they are not facing a serious Arab military threat. We're seen as Israel's closest ally, and that could lead Israel's enemies to conclude that the only way to inflict damage [on Israel] is to use [terrorism] against the US."

Jim Phillips of the Heritage Foundation adds that, as the US improves security at embassies and other stationary objects, terrorists will look toward targets that are harder to defend. The Cole, in Yemen for a four-hour refueling stop, was a case in point.

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By Anne Hull and Steve Vogel Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday , October 19, 2000 ; Page A01

NORFOLK, Oct. 18 –– The sky hung low and damp over Pier 12 at Norfolk Naval Station, nothing but gray, except for a bugle, playing taps, and a set of fresh wreaths against the harbor.

Today, the country said goodbye to the 17 sailors whose lives were lost in a terrorist attack against the USS Cole last week in the faraway port in Yemen. A mournful gaze was cast by about 5,000 people. They crowded onto the cement pier, with sailors standing three deep along the tall rails of the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and two of the Cole's sister ships, the destroyers USS Ross and the USS McFaul. There were members of Congress, decorated admirals, a first lady. But all eyes were on the procession of buses and ambulances that rolled slowly to the platform just before the 11 a.m. service. Thirty-six injured sailors hobbled on canes and crutches, others wheeled in on gurneys, some with bandaged faces and bloodied eyes, all so young and solemn as they were escorted to their waiting families in the audience.

The center section of folding chairs, protected by ropes, remained empty. Finally, the families of the dead and missing sailors unloaded from two buses. Walking to their places, they leaned on each other, wearing black, clutching photographs taken from scrapbooks and baby books.

How they wished they were sitting in the section for the injured.

Returning from the Middle East peace negotiations in Egypt to attend Wednesday's memorial service, President Clinton promised action against those who bombed the Cole while it was on a refueling stop as it headed toward the Persian Gulf.

"To those who attacked them we say, 'You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you and justice will prevail.' "

Others vowed similar retribution in their remarks. "Those who perpetrated this act should remember that America's memory is long, and our reach longer," said General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Richard Danzig, secretary of the Navy, reminded the mourners of the valor of the 240 sailors left behind on the Cole. "For two days and two nights," Danzig said, "they fought under the most extreme conditions--blood, bent and broken steel, flooding, uncertainty and danger. They saved their ship, their injured--every one of them--and each other."

But the hour-long ceremony celebrated the lives of the young sailors who would never come home. Clinton read each of the 17 names, and quoted an Archibald MacLeish poem that honors those lost in service to their country.

"'The young no longer speak, but they have a silence that speaks for them at night," Clinton said. "They say, we were young; remember us. They say, we have done what we could, but until it is finished, it is not done. They say, our deaths are not ours, they are yours; they will mean what you make them. They say, we leave you our deaths; give them their meaning.' "

Before the service, in a historic house on the naval base, Clinton met privately for 90 minutes with all of the families of the 17 sailors, as well 36 of the injured. Those with loved ones still classified as missing told the president they were anxious for a final word, and asked Clinton to help them any way he could.

"He cried with us and talked with us," said Robert Francis of Woodleaf, N.C., whose daughter, Lakeina Francis, a mess management specialist, is classified as missing. "I've always been proud to be an American. It solidified my feelings. He knew my daughter's name." At the service, the Francis family sat in the second row, blue and yellow ribbons representing the Cole colors pinned to their mourning clothes. Their daughter had only been aboard the Cole for two weeks when it was attacked, yet many of the injured sailors approached them with stories about Lakeina. "Everybody loved my daughter," Francis said.

Under the gravest of settings, many families met the shipmates of their sons and daughters. At every turn they saw the likeness of their own child. On Wednesday, they learned that the remains of eight missing sailors were expected to arrive at Dover Air Force Base, bringing to 13 the number of bodies returned to the U.S. Four still have not been recovered.

Virginia Brown was sitting with other Cole family members when her cellular phone rang. It was her husband, Petty Officer First Class Jeffrey Brown, calling from aboard the Cole in Yemen. He asked his wife to hold up the phone so he could listen to the service. After 20 minutes, she heard her husband crying.

Brown, of Norfolk, said she didn't feel entitled to cry. "It could have been me, sitting in the front row, grieving over his life," she said.

Augustine Wiggins, the sister of Seaman James R. McDaniels of Norfolk, wondered whether her brother's death could have been prevented. "It's not that Clinton or anybody else can do anything about it now," said Wiggins. "What I don't understand is if they had warnings, why they went into that port."

Some families came to Wednesday's service still believing their prayers would be answered. Against rational hope. Against the somber clasped hands of the Navy chaplains. The family of Timothy L. Gauna came from their home in Texas still believing their son would be found alive.

But at the end of the service, Gauna's mother broke down, wailing uncontrollably. "He's gone, he's gone," she sobbed.

"It's a tough day," said Aaron Wibberley, 26, the cousin of one of the sailors killed, Seaman Apprentice Craig B. Wibberley of Williamsport, Md. "It's a terrible thing. They were trying to protect the peace."

Others found comfort in Clinton's word. "It let me know that my husband is not over there for nothing," said Dorothy Walker, another wife of a Cole sailor.

The mourners included hundreds of Navy and other military retirees living in the Hampton Roads region. "I just feel I owe it to them," said Howard Burton, 71, a retired Navy submariner living in Norfolk. "This is a way to show respect, maybe, give some strength to the families."

Many sailors from other ships who attended the service said they took the attack on the Cole personally. "Unless you've been part of the Navy, it's hard to understand," said Chief Petty Officer Marcel Castro, assigned to the USS Anzio. "It reaches down to the core." After the service, Castro and his wife walked to the edge of the pier and tossed 17 carnations into the gray water.

USA President takes up best role: consoler

Clinton's eulogy for 17 sailors Wednesday shows him as nation's chaplain.

By Francine Kiefer ([email protected]) Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON

President Clinton, delivering an emotional eulogy for the 17 victims of the USS Cole Wednesday, showed the nation one of his most effective roles - and one increasingly important to the modern American presidency: national chaplain.

The president-as-pastor is as old as the office itself. Abraham Lincoln wrote deeply moving letters to Civil War widows, and speechwriters consider his Gettysburg address a model of how to move a nation from tragedy to rebirth.

But it is the television age, as well as the partisan nature of Washington, that makes this healing role a much more important - and visible - part of the presidency today.

"One of the ways that a president can still rise above the din of the moment, and truly be the president, is a moment of crisis," says Michael Waldman, former speechwriter to President Clinton.

That was clear yesterday, when Clinton addressed the mourners at Norfolk Naval Station, striking a balance between honoring the dead and vowing that there will be no safe haven for those who attack the United States. Before the service, he met with the victims' families and with the injured - who, despite being bedridden, insisted on attending the service.

Instinctively, the nation looks to the president when lives have been suddenly and inexplicably lost, be they astronauts, the victims in Oklahoma City, or, this week, a leading political figure like Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan.

The president's role, in such times, is more than that of parish eulogist. He has to speak specifically to the families, but also to the nation, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on presidential rhetoric. He has to honor those who have died, connect them to our national values, and take the country forward. "It is a rehearsal of basic values. It is a unifying rhetoric. It's a very difficult rhetoric to deliver," she says.

Indeed, experts list only two presidents in modern times who have been able to lead a grieving nation with consistent, exceptional eloquence: Ronald Reagan and Mr. Clinton.

President Reagan's address after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger was nothing less than "brilliant," says Ms. Jamieson. On that January day, the country - including many schoolchildren - watched the launch live, and witnessed that familiar plume terminate suddenly in a shocking ball of smoke.

The president, in televised remarks from the Oval Office, spoke directly to young viewers, explaining that the lost Challenger was part of the risks involved with exploration and discovery. But Jamieson points to his parting words as the most important:

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them - this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved goodbye, and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.' "

He succeeded, says Jamieson, in taking the tragic image that defined the moment, and replacing it with a higher message. "He displaced our memory of the shuttle exploding with our memory of them waving goodbye."

Reagan, however, did not write that speech. It was penned by his speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, who incidentally knew that Reagan was familiar with the World War II poem quoted at the end.

Still, who wrote it is not important, says Jamieson. The key was in the delivery: Reagan, whose acting career was so often ridiculed, effectively poured forth all the emotions the nation felt that day.

Other presidents haven't fared so well. President Truman was awkward at ceremony and symbolism. Reagan's successor, George Bush, once called his former boss for help when he had to preside over a memorial service for 47 young sailors who died in an accident on the USS Iowa. His tears were real, but his performance was strained. Later, he conceded, "the Bush family is not very good at that kind of thing."

Even in moments of great joy, Bush found it hard to connect in a meaningful way with the nation, says historian Carol Gelderman. When the Berlin Wall fell, Bush said the historic event "certainly conforms with the Helsinki final accords and is clearly a good development in terms of human rights."

But Clinton has carried on the Reagan tradition, and according to some, even exceeded it. "Reagan has been totally outclassed by Clinton," Ms. Gelderman says. Like Reagan, Clinton has one defining eulogy: his remarks at the memorial service four days after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. His delivery touched so many, it gave the mired president a 12-point boost in the polls.

He honored the victims, and then sought to move the country beyond the numbing moment.

"To all my fellow Americans beyond this hall," he said, "one thing we owe those who have sacrificed is the duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil." His words of comfort were strengthened by his promise of the next step - to crack down on terrorism.

But perhaps more so than Reagan, Clinton also devotes a lot of individual attention to those directly affected by tragedy.

Mr. Waldman, in his new book "POTUS Speaks," says the president spoke six times at services marking former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death. And, as he did in Norfolk, Va., yesterday, he often spends hours meeting with families before a service.

"He typically would spend a lot of time before the service meeting with each of the families, so that when he walks up on stage, he has not only the text in the folder in his hand, but he's accumulated the emotions of the previous few hours," said Waldman in an interview.

Clinton also gets involved in the writing, rewriting, and honing of his eulogies, says Waldman. When he spoke at the service honoring the two police officers who prevented a gunman from terrorizing the US Capitol, he sent his speechwriter a beautifully written paragraph to add to the speech.

"Clinton takes these speeches very seriously," says Waldman. "He understands their power."

It's a power, says Jamieson, that lets us experience for one moment our unity as a nation.

Yemeni president calls USS Cole attack 'very well-planned'

The USS Cole is moored to a refueling platform in the industrial harbor in Aden, Yemen

WEB EXCLUSIVE On the scene with CNN's Matthew Chance in Aden, Yemen

Details of what investigators have found October 18, 2000 Web posted at: 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 GMT)

------In this story:

Boy gave lead to investigators

Bin Laden high on some suspect lists

Cole recovery efforts

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN National Security Producer Chris Plante, producers Terry Frieden and Nancy Peckenham contributed to this report.

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- Yemen's president said the bombing of the USS Cole was "a very well-planned operation, and it seems it was prepared a long while ago."

The crippled destroyer, stable but listing from a large gash in its side after last week's attack, remained in Aden harbor, where divers continued their search for four bodies still trapped in the twisted wreckage.

GALLERIES Images from Wednesday's memorial services

USS Cole wounded return home

VIDEO CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports the ship's commander commends sailors' actions in a video sent to their families (October 18)

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Watch highlights of the memorial service (October 18)

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Two USS Cole representatives thank friends and family of the ship's crew members for their support (October 18)

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ALSO Retired admiral, general to probe Cole security

Memorials honor slain Cole sailors for 'debt we can never repay'

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Qatar's Al-Jazeera Television on Wednesday that Yemeni security forces had uncovered the hideouts of the men, the car and the winch used to take their small boat to the water and the laboratory used to mix the explosives.

In Washington, a senior Pentagon official confirmed that significant leads had been uncovered in Yemen, including a boat trailer that might have been used to set up the attack and the nearby apartment where the bomb might have been assembled.

Saleh said it appeared the attack was carried out by two men who had been living in Yemen for no more than two months.

"Certainly they're Arabs, because they were seen praying -- eyewitnesses saw them as they were praying," Saleh said. He said while their nationalities had not been determined, one eyewitness reported the suspects' accents sounded Saudi.

Boy gave lead to investigators "There were two perpetrators of the attack -- based on eyewitness reports, there were two," Saleh said. "One had a beard and wore glasses."

The Yemeni leader also said the bearded man gave a 12-year-old boy some coins to watch his car at the beach while he carried a rubber boat into the water. The man never returned for his car, and Yemeni police were able to trace him back to the apartment.

The president said other Yemeni citizens had been helpful in the investigation. A 17- year-old boy even dove underneath the Cole and retrieved evidence for authorities, Saleh said.

Yemeni authorities have been rounding up large numbers of people for questioning, including members of Islamic militant groups, in their investigation into the attack. The October 12 blast blew a 40-foot by 40-foot (12-meter by 12-meter) hole in the midsection of the ship at the waterline, destroying an engine room and nearby mess area where sailors were eating lunch.

"Every Yemeni national, if he's a terrorist, he would be taken to court," the president said. "If he's an Arab or Israeli or anybody else, he would be brought to court and brought to trial."

But he said there are no firm leads on the nationalities of anyone who may have been involved in the plot. "Let us continue our investigation," Saleh said. "We can't determine (anything) today."

Saleh said Yemen had good relations with the United States and would help U.S. officials in their probe.

"I hope the media is not going to blow up the relations we have," he said. "We are working together with the Americans to uncover the crime, and the details of the crime, that was perpetrated against the ship."

U.S. officials praised the Yemeni authorities.

"We are receiving extraordinary cooperation from the government of Yemen," National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told CNN early Wednesday.

"They are not just letting us investigate. They are investigating with us in a vigorous way. That has produced a number of significant developments," he said.

Bin Laden high on some suspect lists U.S. investigators have put former Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden high on the list of possible suspects. But U.S. officials emphasize it's much too early to conclude that his Afghanistan-based organization is responsible, and they have declined to discuss any evidence supporting that theory.

Bin Laden has been charged with murder in U.S. indictments stemming from the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.

In a statement faxed to CNN this week, representatives of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in New York said Afghanistan protests "speculation by the media and others who point to Osama bin Laden as having a hand in perpetrating the terrorist attack in the port of Aden."

The statement said, "Osama bin Laden, who has sought refuge in Afghanistan, remains in the country under strict supervision. He is not permitted to make statements, communicate by any means, or conduct any activities that would threaten any other country, such as meeting with foreigners."

Despite the apparent progress in the Cole investigation, several sources contacted by CNN cautioned against expecting early conclusions.

"At this point it would be premature to say that Osama Bin Laden is responsible," said a senior FBI source. "It's certainly one of the running theories, but it's too early to say with any degree of certainty bin Laden's group -- or any group -- is responsible."

Nonetheless, some senior law enforcement officials privately acknowledge it would not be surprising if the investigation eventually leads to bin Laden's organization or individuals with ties to it. One source characterized the investigation as "headed towards Osama, but we are not there yet." The source went on to say "he is at the top of our list."

Another official familiar with the investigation was more cautious. "It's tempting to just say 'he's it,' but you have to be very careful and see how the investigation unfolds," the official said.

The probe appeared to be making headway as FBI Director Louis Freeh left Washington for Yemen. An FBI source said Freeh's visit to meet his Yemeni counterparts would be brief, and said the visit to conduct meetings and "show the flag" should not be seen as related to the pace of the probe.

U.S. officials also confirmed the FBI laboratory had received the first evidence from the Cole. The material, which arrived in Washington on Monday night, according to one official includes swabs of explosives residue that investigators hope will help lead to those responsible for the bombing.

Cole recovery efforts In Yemen, the remaining crew aboard the Cole was not able to view the memorial held in their home port in Norfolk, Virginia, on TV "primarily because they're working hard 24 hours a day to keep the ship afloat," said Adm. Robert Natter, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

Of the 17 sailors killed in the bombing as the destroyer began a refueling stop in Aden, 13 bodies have been recovered, and the other four remain missing.

The remains of two sailors were removed from the wreckage Wednesday, and six bodies were recovered Tuesday.

The remains of all eight are being carried out of Yemen aboard a U.S. military aircraft bound for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware after a stop in Bahrain, the Navy said.

The Navy has signed a $4.5 million contract with the Norwegian owners of the heavy- lift ship Blue Marlin to carry the Cole back to a U.S. port after the FBI finishes its investigation aboard ship.

The Blue Marlin, currently in port in Dubai on the Persian Gulf, will head for Aden on Thursday and is expected to arrive four or five days later. About a week after that, it will begin hauling the Cole back to the United States, the Navy said.

Several U.S. warships have been sent to Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, to support the salvage and investigation operation, code-named Determined Response. They will also provide extra security by ensuring that personnel can live on board ship rather than on land.

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen will announce on Thursday the appointment of two retired senior military officers to head an independent investigation of the bombing, with special focus on whether there were security lapses. Clinton Leads Nation in Mourning USS Cole Sailors

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By Steve Vogel Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 18, 2000

NORFOLK, Va., Oct. 18 – Thousands of mourners, led by President Clinton, paid tearful respects today at a memorial service here for the 17 sailors killed last week in the attack on the USS Cole.

Tearful family members listened to Clinton and other speakers describe the victims as heroes who had died protecting the nation. Sailors injured in the attack last week in Yemen were also present, some carried off ambulances in gurneys to attend the service. Many of them wept as a Navy bugler standing on the bow of the sister ship to the Cole played taps.

Clinton and other speakers issued a warning to the perpetrators of the attack, saying the United States would retaliate when it ascertained who attacked the ship. "You will not find a safe harbor," Clinton said. "We will find you and justice will prevail. America will not stop standing guard for peace."

Thousands of sailors stationed here at the Cole's home port manned the rails of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and two other ships that flanked the pier where the memorial was held.

Aaron Wibberley, a cousin of Seaman Apprentice Craig B. Wibberley, was among many family members who participated in the emotional service. "It's a terrible thing. They were there trying to protect the peace."

Before the service, Clinton met privately with family members of the dead sailors at a home on the base. House of Mystery

More Details Emerge About Cole Bombing

The guided missile destroyer USS Cole is moored to a refueling platform on, Oct.15, three days after a terrorist attack in the industrial harbor in Aden, Yemen, in this photo released by the U.S.Navy on, Oct.18. (U.S. Navy/AP Photo)

Oct. 18 — A small boat similar to one used in the deadly attack on the USS Cole in the Middle East port city of Aden was seen just days before the blast outside a home which has become a focus of investigations into the blast, ABCNEWS has learned. The latest on the Cole investigation. RealVideo (download RealPlayer) A neighbor told ABCNEWS there had been a fiberglass boat in the driveway, about 20 to 25 feet long, a description that matches some witnesses’ recollections of the boat used in the attack on the Cole last week as it refueled in Aden, Yemen. Neighbors said the men in the house had been doing work on the boat, but that they had piled up blocks of asbestos to hide the boat from view. Other witnesses saw an explosive device being loaded onto either a trailer or a flatbed truck in Aden. The home, a villa near Aden where investigators said they found bomb-making equipment on Tuesday, is about 300 yards from the harbor and looks out towards the water — it’s not far from the USS Cole. The bomb-making materials were traced to the house after investigators found traces of explosives in a car near the harbor; the car was being used by the men in the house. The house had been occupied by two men, who officials said were non-Yemeni Arabs who arrived in Yemen about four days before the attack. The building is of cinder-block construction with a corrugated metal roof, one or 1½ stories high. It’s simple, poorly constructed, and sits behind a cinder-block wall about six feet high. Officials are also looking at another house in the investigation, and said that four men were involved. Two are believed to be dead, and two are believed to be at large — but it’s still unclear which two were in the house with the boat. Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, said the investigation had taken a “quantum leap” with the discovery of the bomb-making materials in the house. The U.S. State Department issued a new warning telling Americans to be cautious traveling in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey, saying “the U.S. Government has indications that individuals may be planning terrorist actions against United States citizens and interests.” “The information we have, however, is nonspecific as to timing, type of attack or any exact location,” a State Department spokesman said at a briefing today. Hearing on Security The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled an open hearing on Thursday, and a top-secret one Friday, on issues related to the attack on the Cole. Top generals and representatives from the State Department and the intelligence community will speak at tomorrow’s hearing. As soon as tomorrow, the Pentagon may also announce it is forming a security review panel to look at whether new measures are needed to protect US military forces overseas. The panel looking at the Cole incident will be similar to the panel set up following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. During the bombing at a U.S. barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, 19 U.S. servicemen were killed and 500 Americans and Saudis injured. An investigation afterwards concluded that the troops had not been adequately protected, and commanders in the field were given extra direct responsibility for protecting their troops. The bombers were never found.

Managing Threats Today, the Navy asked a team of contractors to start urgently looking at what types of measures the navy could use on its ships against potential small boat threats in crowded harbors in peacetime. Navy ships pull into local harbors around the world daily. Navy leaders are consulting with the Coast Guard, which regularly deals with drug smugglers and illegal aliens in small boats. Some of the measures the Navy could consider is equipping ship decks with water cannon, sticky foam or rubber bullet type bombs.

Memorial Services Mourners paid their respects to the 17 sailors killed in the blast at three memorial services: one at 11 a.m. ET in the Cole’s home port of Norfolk, Va.; one at noon ET in Aden; and one at 1 p.m. ET in San Diego, Calif. (See related story.) Thirty-six of the 39 wounded sailors attended the Norfolk service. One woman is recovering from surgery in Norfolk, and two critically injured sailors remain in a military hospital in Germany. Two more bodies were recovered from the ship today. Of the 17 dead, five bodies have been returned to the United States, eight bodies are still in Aden waiting to be sent back home, and four remain in the ship, where cutting and welding crews are attempting to extract them from the wreckage.

Determined Response FBI Director Louis Freeh also said he will travel to Yemen, where he will take a hands-on role in the investigation. Details of Freeh’s travel plans were not immediately available. Freeh was pleased with the Yemeni government’s cooperation and thought the first few days of the investigation had gone well, officials said. U.S. and Yemeni investigators began working together on Tuesday, after the discovery of the bomb- making materials. Moments before the huge blast, two men were seen standing on the deck of a small vessel alongside the destroyer, U.S. authorities said. A massive hole was blown into the Cole’s hull and the attack ship disintegrated into “confetti size” pieces. A large hole was blown in the side of the USS Cole as it stopped in Aden, Yemen, to refuel. (ABCNEWS.com/ Magellan Geographix)

Some U.S. experts have estimated that the small boat could have been carrying up to 500 pounds of high explosives, while U.S. officials have said the blast had an effect more like a missile than like a bomb. So far, Yemeni security forces have interrogated hundreds of port workers and others, including the head of the company that services U.S. warships. Several U.S. warships have been sent to the area to support the salvage and investigation operation, code-named Determined Response. They will also provide extra security by ensuring personnel can live on board ship rather than on land.

October 18, 2000 Senate panel plans hearings on Navy's use of Yemen port

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee will open two days of hearings Thursday into the decisions that sent the destroyer Cole and its crew to the port of Aden, Yemen, where a suicide attack claimed 17 lives and crippled the $1 billion Norfolk-based ship.

Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., the committee chairman, announced the hearings late Tuesday. He said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni will testify in a public session Thursday, and that witnesses from the State and Defense departments and the intelligence community will testify in a closed-door hearing Friday.

Zinni, who retired in July as head of the U.S. Central Command, was instrumental in reopening the port of Aden to Navy ships about 15 months ago.

In interviews since last Thursday's attack on the Cole, he has defended the stops as important in building ties between the U.S. and Yemeni militaries and restoring stability to a country torn by civil war.

``We were helping Yemen help itself, and everyone in the region was interested in having us help them,'' Zinni told The New York Times.

Warner said he is determined to avoid questions best left to the criminal investigation into the actual bombing. But he asserted that Congress needs more information about how the military and diplomats choose ports of call and refueling stops in the Middle East and other troubled regions, and on the security arrangements made at those ports.

Yemen has a long-standing reputation as a haven for terrorists, and the State Department has warned American tourists to steer clear of the rugged, dusty country at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Warner said Americans who've read the State Department advisory on the Internet have flooded his office and those of other senators with questions about how Navy ships and crews could have been sent there.

``There's a very careful format that's followed'' in making such moves, ``and the public's entitled to know,'' he added.

Warner said he's calling the hearings now -- less than a week after the bombing -- because Congress could adjourn for the year as soon as Friday.

On Friday, the witnesses will be Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy; Adm. Vern Clark, Chief of Naval Operations; Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the current head of Central Command; and other unspecified State Department and intelligence community representatives.

The Central Command involves personnel from all of the military services and is responsible for U.S. security interests in 25 nations that stretch from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf region into Central Asia.

Clinton, Navy honor fallen Cole sailors

A sailor stands among flowers at the memorial service at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia on Wednesday

WEB EXCLUSIVE On the scene with CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon

------On the scene with CNN's Mark Potter in Portsmouth, Virginia

Memorial service today in Norfolk, Virginia October 18, 2000 Web posted at: 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT)

------In this story:

Injured sailors to attend

FBI chief going to Yemen

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Correspondents Mark Potter, Carl Rochelle, Kathleen Koch and Charles Zewe contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris.

NORFOLK NAVAL STATION, Virginia (CNN) -- President Clinton and the families of the victims of last week's bomb attack on the USS Cole joined thousands of Naval personnel today at Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia to honor the 17 sailors killed in the bomb blast.

In his remarks at a memorial service, Clinton read off the names of the 17 sailors who died while their colleagues and family wiped away tears.

"Today we honor our finest young people, fallen soldiers. We mourn their loss, celebrate their lives," the president said. "Their tragic loss reminds us that even when America is not at war, the men and women who serve risk their lives."

The crippled destroyer, stable but listing from a large gash in its side after last week's suspected suicide bombing in Yemen, remained in Aden harbor, where divers continued their search for six bodies still trapped in the twisted wreckage.

Although U.S. officials say the United States and Yemen have made progress in their investigation into the October 12 bombing, they decline to elaborate.

GALLERY USS Cole wounded return home

VIDEO CNN's Charles Zewe looks at how the families are coping with their losses

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------

The parents of missing sailor Kenneth Clodfelter haven't given up hope

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

U.S. law enforcement sources in Washington would say only that bomb-making materials had been found at an apartment in Yemen. The sources also said unspecified materials removed from the Cole and brought to Washington are being analyzed by FBI scientists.

Yemeni authorities have questioned and detained members of Islamic militant groups Tuesday in their investigation.

Injured sailors to attend Norfolk, the Cole's home port, is headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

The setting for Wednesday's service is the Naval Station's Pier 12, one of the long stretches of steel and concrete where massive Navy aircraft carriers tie up when in port.

The carrier Eisenhower is now docked there. Nearby are two of the Cole's sister ships, the destroyers USS Ross and USS McFaul.

Among the military leaders to be joining Clinton at the memorial service are Defense Secretary William Cohen, Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Before the president addresses thousands of mourners at the naval base he is to meet privately with victims' families and some of the 39 sailors injured in the blast.

Most of the survivors are on convalescent leave after being released from the nearby Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Eight sailors are still hospitalized there, including four who arrived in the U.S. on Tuesday

Seven of them are well enough to attend the memorial service, even though some must be hooked to IVs for pain medication, said Capt. Martin Snyder, senior attending physician.

The eighth, who had surgery for a broken leg, must remain hospitalized.

Two other injured sailors remain in Germany undergoing medical treatment.

In Yemen, their crewmates still aboard the Cole in Yemen won't be able to view the memorial on TV "primarily because they're working hard 24 hours a day to keep the ship afloat," said U.S. Atlantic Fleet Commander-in-Chief Adm. R.J. Natter.

Of the 17 sailors killed in the bombing as the destroyer began a refueling stop in Aden, 11 bodies have been recovered with another six still missing. Plans are under way to return to the United States the remains of six sailors whose bodies were removed from the wreckage on Tuesday.

Another memorial service will also be held on Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Base in San Diego, California.

FBI chief going to Yemen The blast blew open a 40-by-40-foot hole in the midsection of the ship at the waterline, destroying an engine room and nearby mess area where sailors were eating lunch.

U.S. Navy officials have said a small boat in a group helping to moor the Cole for refueling had been laden with explosives and blew up alongside the ship, one of the world's most sophisticated guided missile destroyers.

President Clinton and daughter, Chelsea, arrive at Norfolk Naval Air Station on Wednesday

Witnesses described two men aboard the boat standing to attention just before it exploded.

Clinton has promised to track down and punish the "hate-filled cowards" behind the attack.

FBI Director Louis Freeh will go to Yemen to oversee a joint FBI-Yemeni team hunting for clues. So far, the investigation has made good progress, according to Samuel Berger, the White House national security adviser.

"We are receiving extraordinary cooperation from the government of Yemen," he told CNN. "They are not just letting us investigate. They are investigating with us in a vigorous way. That has produced a number of significant developments."

Yemeni authorities rounded up large numbers of people for questioning about the attack, but neither U.S. nor Yemeni officials would provide specifics of who was in custody.

Cohen plans to appoint two retired senior military officers to head an independent investigation of the bombing, with special focus on whether there were security lapses, a senior defense official said.

The Navy has signed a $4.5 million contract with the Norwegian owners of the heavy- lift ship Blue Marlin to carry the Cole back to a U.S. port after the FBI finishes its investigation aboard ship.

The Blue Marlin, currently in port in Dubai on the Persian Gulf, will head for Aden on Thursday, and is expected to arrive four or five days later. About a week after that it will begin hauling the Cole back to the United States, the Navy said.

Several U.S. warships have been sent to Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, to support the salvage and investigation operation, code-named Determined Response. They will also provide extra security by ensuring personnel can live on board ship rather than on land. Wednesday, 18 October, 2000, 17:16 GMT 18:16 UK Clinton pledges to hunt Yemen bombers

Mourners gather at the US Atlantic Fleet HQ

President Clinton has told a memorial service for the 17 American sailors killed in last Thursday's bomb attack on a US warship that justice will be done.

Today we honour our finest young people

Bill Clinton He told the ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters of the US Atlantic Fleet: "To those who attacked them we say: 'You will not find a safe harbour. We will find you, and justice will prevail.'

"America will not stop standing guard for peace, or freedom or stability in the Middle East and around the world."

Mr Clinton spoke of his grief at the loss of the sailors killed when a rubber boat laden with explosives rammed the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.

He said: "Today we honour our finest young people, fallen soldiers that rose to freedom's challenge.

"We mourn their loss and celebrate their lives and offer the love and prayers of a grateful nation to their families."

Meanwhile, US divers in Yemen continued their efforts to retrieve the remains of the last six sailors at the site of the explosion.

Injured attend

Eight of the 39 sailors injured in the blast, who insisted on attending the memorial service, were brought out of hospital for the occasion.

Thirty-three sailors from the USS Cole returned to Norfolk on Sunday to a hero's welcome.

A US military spokesman said on Wednesday that Washington and Yemen had made progress in their investigation into the attack, though he would not give details. Investigations into the attack are continuing

Yemeni investigators discovered bomb-making equipment on Monday in a house near Aden.

Two men thought to be linked to the bombing spent several days in the house.

The USS Cole was being moored for refuelling when the rubber boat blew up alongside it.

Eyewitnesses said two men were seen standing up in the small boat before the blast.

Two previously unknown Muslim groups have said they were behind the attack, but officials have not yet confirmed whether they were involved.

It was the deadliest attack on the US military since the 1996 bombing of a US Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19.

The Fattest Sitting Duck

Security Around The USS Cole Is Tightening Of All The U.S. Targets In Yemen, The Cole Is The Juiciest Reported Terrorist Threat Has Officials Reacting Fast

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 24, 2000

AP USS Cole

(CBS) The threat to U.S. ships and personnel in Aden is considered so great that the highest possible defensive posture has been in effect for days. Yet as CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports, of all the potential U.S. targets in the inflamed Middle East, the juiciest — the USS Cole — is still sitting disabled in the port of Aden.

Not only that, the thousands of American personnel who've been brought in to repair and protect the ship and to investigate the attack are also feared to be sitting ducks.

That's why heavily-armed Yemeni troops are manning a security cordon around the U.S. operations center in a hotel on shore where more than a hundred FBI, military and diplomatic personnel have been working, and why U.S. Marines are manning positions out of sight inside.

It's also why a 24-hour Marine guard is being maintained in small boats patrolling around the Cole, something the Navy confirmed today was not the case when she came into this risky harbor and was attacked by a bomb-carrying fiberglass skiff.

To try to reduce the exposure here, more and more of the operation is being transferred to the American armada lying offshore, a fleet that is now up to eight ships and which is carrying 2,000 sailors and another 2,000 Marines.

The American presence here was due to be scaled down anyway as the emergency repair work on the Cole was completed.

CBS News Exclusive For the first time, a camera crew has been allowed to view the damage from the 1998 strikes on Osama bin Laden's alleged hideout in Afghanistan. Click here for CBS News Anchor Dan Rather's report and footage from the site.

She's now awaiting the transport ship that will carry her home, but reducing what they call the American footprint here — the vulnerability — has now taken on a new sense of urgency.

Brig. Gen. Abdullah Ali Eleiwah, head of the Yemeni investigative team, would only say Tuesday that the probe is "moving forward."

Intelligence analysts continue to focus on Osama bin Laden's organization. But a picture is emerging of the men authorities believe were behind the Oct. 12 attack. It indicates they had resources, expertise and patience.

From a hilltop apartment with a roof commanding a sweeping view of the harbor, they spied on ships that stopped to refuel, probably using a pair of binoculars investigators found at the site.

They were sometimes joined by a few other men. At two other locations, they built the bombs that would blast a hole in the USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others. The men believed to be behind the attack hardly talked to their neighbors. But they spent a lot of time on the beach, grilling fishermen about the comings and goings of ships in the harbor and how far they could go in their boats.

They paid a total of at least $530 a month—a lot of money in Aden—in rent for three locations Yemeni officials believe were used for the attack. The two men introduced themselves to some as investors.

A few days before the attack on the Cole, the two men told neighbors they were going to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage and planned to return in late December after the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

They have not been seen since the blast the Aden harbor, which U.S. officials believe was the work of suicide bombers.

October 18, 2000 Norwegian firm's floating dock to bring home the Cole

With many of its fallen sailors already here, the Navy has made arrangements to bring home the Cole.

A Norwegian firm's floating dock, already in the Middle East, will bring the damaged destroyer back to the United States. The dock and its cargo are expected to arrive here late next month. The Military Sealift Command on Monday awarded Offshore Heavy Transport of Norway the $4.5 million contract.

The Navy has not said what shipyard will repair the Cole. Preliminary estimates peg the damage to the $1 billion warship at between $100 million and $150 million.

The timing could hardly be worse for the Navy's repair budget. The budget for fiscal 2001 is $2.3 billion, about 93.5 percent of what the Navy needs to maintain the fleet, Senate sources said. Even after a congressional infusion of $400 million in recent months into both the fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2001 budgets, the Navy's maintenance budget looks to be short $283 million for fiscal 2001, Senate sources said.

The reason for the shortfall, Senate sources said, is that the Navy has been underestimating its maintenance funding needs to help its overall budget conform to Clinton administration defense budget requests. In practical terms, the maintenance funding shortfalls forced the Atlantic Fleet last week to advise Hampton Roads shipyards that it is shy $143 million in the fiscal 2001 budget and will have to cancel 16 scheduled overhauls.

Without additional funding, the Cole repair bill would likely break the Navy's bank, and could force it to cancel more overhauls, called ``availabilities'' in Navy terms.

Sen. Charles S. Robb, who has criticized the Navy for not asking for the money it needs, said Tuesday that emergency funds to pay for repairing the Cole are on the way.

``We were talking Saturday about an emergency supplement to repair the Cole,'' Robb said. ``We're going to fund it in a way that doesn't exacerbate the situation, that won't erode funding for availabilities or decrease the number of availabilities.''

Sen. John Warner also supports additional repair funds for the Navy, both for the Cole and for maintenance requirements, Warner spokesman Geoff Schwartzman said.

Preparations for the Cole's trip home from Aden, Yemen, where it was attacked and remains at anchor, could begin as soon as this weekend.

The Blue Marlin, the vessel that will haul the warship back to the United States, is based in Dubai, a Persian Gulf seaport in the United Arab Emirates. On Thursday, the Blue Marlin is to begin steaming toward Aden, said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman. The ship will need four to five days to make the trip to Aden and perhaps another week to prepare for and then load the Cole.

Once it picks up the Cole, the journey from Yemen to the United States will take about 25 days, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Bill Speaks.

The Blue Marlin is a 712-foot, self-propelled, floating dock designed to haul offshore oil rigs, which are large, heavy and unwieldy cargoes. Its cargo deck is 585 feet long and 138 feet wide. The Cole is 505 feet long, and 66 feet at its widest point.

When preparations are complete, the Blue Marlin's ballast tanks will be filled to lower the deck under the water's surface. The Catawba tug and cranes on the Blue Marlin will then maneuver the Cole onto a specially constructed cradle on the deck that will hold the destroyer safely, and the ballast tanks will be pumped out, lifting the Cole out of the water.

A Navy official said the trip home could take several more weeks -- the Blue Marlin steams at about 13 knots and may make the trip around the horn of Africa rather than through the Suez Canal. The 4-year-old ship was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Miss.

Quigley described the loading operation as delicate, all the more so because of the need to avoid further damage to the Cole as it is lifted from the water. While the crew and investigators on the ship have had to cut through wreckage to reach and remove the bodies, they are attempting to disturb as little as possible to preserve potential evidence, one official said. Divers who have surveyed the Cole from underwater have determined that the gaping hole left by the bomb is almost twice as big as originally reported. But the ship's keel apparently was not damaged, a key factor in trying to save the ship.

Bomb Material Found in Yemen

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By Alan Sipress and David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 18, 2000 ; Page A25

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 17 –– Yemeni investigators have discovered bomb-making material in an apartment near the Aden port and have linked two men who had stayed there to the apparent terrorist attack that killed 17 American sailors aboard the USS Cole, U.S. and Yemeni officials said today.

The material was uncovered Monday during a search of the apartment, but investigators found no sign of its occupants, who arrived there about four days before Thursday's bombing, according to officials of both countries. They were described by some Yemeni security officials as non-Yemeni Arabs and by others specifically as Saudis.

"We have already received some information from the Yemenis that provides significant leads," said the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara K. Bodine. She refused to provide details about the material discovered at the apartment but said: "Certainly, from yesterday to today it has been a quantum leap."

"That is going to be a treasure trove of information for investigators," said Bob Blitzer, former head of FBI counterterrorism operations. "There may be tools, wires and parts of the detonating device. . . . If there are any travel documents, that would be a real bonus."

The possibility that the explosion could be tied to Saudi nationals was seen as significant. Although they have cited no evidence, U.S. officials have identified exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden and his followers as suspects in the attack. Bin Laden has been indicted by a U.S. grand jury in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. The United States retaliated for the embassy attacks by firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at a paramilitary camp linked to bin Laden in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan suspected of helping to produce a deadly nerve gas for terrorists' use.

In his first public statement in nearly two years, bin Laden was quoted in a Pakistani newspaper, the Jang, as saying he would survive any new attack against him and continue his campaign to rid Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region of U.S. military presence.

"The dream to kill me will never be completed," he was quoted as saying. "I am not afraid of the American threats against me. . . . As long as I am alive there will be no rest for the enemies of Islam."

He did not mention the bombing in Aden and has not taken responsibility for it. The Taliban government of Afghanistan, where bin Laden lives, said earlier that he was not behind the explosion in Aden and is unable to communicate with followers outside Afghanistan.

Discovery of bomb material was revealed a day after Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih cited new evidence in calling the explosion a "planned criminal act," reversing an earlier position that it was likely an accident. At the time, Yemeni officials did not elaborate on this new evidence. A government spokesman declined to comment today on whether the discovery was behind the president's change of view.

Clinton administration officials in Washington said the men who died carrying out the attack on the Cole are not believed to have been among the people who vacated the apartment. The reasoning, sources said, is that someone who can build powerful, complex explosive devices would be deemed too valuable to die in a suicide attack.

With a new trail to follow, FBI and Yemeni investigators began their first day of joint efforts to uncover who was behind the attack, apparently carried out by suicide bombers aboard a small harbor work boat that had pulled aside the Cole as it was mooring for refueling. While Yemeni police, military and intelligence officers lack technical sophistication, U.S. officials praised them for the willingness they have displayed so far in coordinating with FBI agents.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and Dale Watson, head of counterterrorism for the agency, are heading for Yemen as part of the investigation, a Clinton administration official said. A senior administration official returning from Egypt with the president on Air Force One said Freeh believes the government of Yemen "is now cooperating fully and genuinely" in the investigation. "He's very pleased with their investigation, and he thought that the first few days had gone well," the official said.

Another senior U.S. official said FBI agents will take the lead on technical and forensic work, with their local counterparts taking responsibility for questioning suspects. This official, however, would not detail specific responsibilities and whether, for instance, FBI agents will be able to question witnesses and suspects or be present during interrogation.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen plans to appoint two retired senior military officers to head an independent investigation of the bombing, with special focus on whether there were security lapses, a senior defense official said.

Yemeni interrogation techniques have been roundly criticized by human rights groups. The State Department's most recent human rights report ranked Yemen's performance as poor, finding that security forces arbitrarily arrest citizens and torture and abuse prisoners, in some cases to death. U.S. officials have not raised human rights concerns during the current investigation but have regularly discussed this issue with the Yemeni government in the past, a senior U.S. official said.

The FBI investigation remains at the initial stage of collecting and examining physical evidence, including confetti-like shards scattered over the Cole and surrounding waters from the small boat that carried the explosive. A plane with evidence linked to the bombing was en route to the FBI laboratory in Washington, where experts will undertake detailed scientific examinations.

U.S. Navy divers conducting a painstaking search inside the Cole's flooded compartments recovered the bodies of six more sailors. Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald said the divers, working with crews cutting through the steel from above, expect to find the bodies of six more sailors in the same area of the crippled destroyer but that progress in the oily, debris-laden waters has been slow.

The divers are among hundreds of military, FBI, State Department and other personnel who have crowded into this port on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. The arrival Monday of an amphibious ready group, composed of a helicopter carrier, a transport ship and a dock landing ship, brought 2,000 more U.S. Marines to the waters off Aden. These vessels joined a supply ship, a frigate and a destroyer that were sent here after the attack.

A senior U.S. official said bringing the ships to Aden could allow the military to scale back the American presence on land, which has already overwhelmed the capacity of local hotels. The ships would offer not only additional security but better facilities for meeting transportation and communications needs, he said. Sources say bomb-making materials found in Yemen apartment

WEB EXCLUSIVE

On the scene with CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon

October 17, 2000 Web posted at: 8:10 p.m. EDT (0010 GMT)

------In this story:

FBI leads U.S. side of probe

Warning from bin Laden ...

... Denied by Taliban

Cole to take $4.5 million ride

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Correspondent Matthew Chance, CNN Justice Producer Terry Frieden and CNN National Security Producer Chris Plante contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Linda Petty

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two federal law enforcement sources on Tuesday confirmed a report that bomb-making materials had been located in an apartment in Yemen. The sources did not have any additional information on the discovery.

The law enforcement sources also told CNN that the first materials from the USS Cole arrived in Washington late Monday night for analysis by scientists in the crime laboratory at FBI headquarters. While stopping to refuel in Aden, Yemen, on Thursday, the Cole was crippled by an explosion that killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others.

GALLERY USS Cole wounded return home

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

ALSO Six bodies recovered from USS Cole, 2 identified

ALSO Security procedures under review after Cole attack Six bodies recovered from USS Cole, 2 identified

The officials said initial testing on the materials from the Cole was done with field equipment near the site of the explosion, and the materials were then sent to the FBI lab for detailed analysis by experts with more sophisticated analytical tools. Information on the specific contents of the evidence was not immediately available.

The sources would not say whether the material being examined includes bomb residue, but sources acknowledge a high priority for the investigators is to determine the exact makeup of the explosives used in the blast. One law enforcement official says when experts have identified the precise bomb elements used it could help lead to the group or groups responsible, or rule out groups that were not involved.

The discovery of the bomb-making materials was revealed as U.S. officials in Aden said an official joint U.S.-Yemeni investigation team is now looking into the apparent suicide bombing of the Cole.

"We have established what we think is a highly cooperative arrangement with the Yemeni authorities," said U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine. "From that, we are very hopeful that we are going to get to the bottom of this. And certainly from yesterday to today has been a quantum leap."

The ambassador said the team officially started work Tuesday, one day after Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he had "important evidence" showing that Thursday's explosion was a criminal act.

Other U.S. officials said the two countries had been sharing information before forming the official alliance.

FBI director Louis Freeh told the White House he was heading for Yemen as part of the investigation into the apparent terrorist attack on the destroyer.

A senior administration official with President Clinton on Air Force One, returning from Egypt, said Freeh believes the government of Yemen "is now cooperating fully and genuinely" in the investigation. "He's very pleased with their investigation, and he thought that the first few days had gone well," the official said.

Recovery of bodies from the severely damaged destroyer has been slowed not only because of the need to cut and remove debris, but also because of the desire not to disturb any possible evidence.

U.S. forensic teams are gathering evidence while Yemeni authorities are rounding up suspects.

On the streets of Aden, tight security is in place. Yemeni officials said large numbers of people are being detained and questioned. Among those being held are suspected members of known Islamic militant groups, the officials said. For the United States and Yemen, however, this is a highly sensitive period, and at this stage neither government is confirming details of exactly who is in custody.

FBI leads U.S. side of probe The FBI is leading the U.S. side of the investigation. FBI Director Louis Freeh on Tuesday transferred the investigation to the command of John O'Neill in the New York field office.

More than 60 agents from New York -- including investigators from the Joint Terrorist Task Force and field personnel involved in evidence recovery -- are part of the FBI's team in Yemen.

According to an FBI spokesman, the New York office was chosen because of its experience investigating terrorist attacks such as the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.

Seventeen people have been indicted in those attacks and are charged with being members of a network of operatives headed by Osama bin Laden, an ex-Saudi millionaire. Bin Laden, who has been living in Afghanistan since 1996, is also charged with murder in those indictments.

Investigators believe that a small boat carrying explosives blasted a hole in the side of the USS Cole

Investigators caution, however, that the move to put the New York office in charge of the investigation does not mean that they have found a link between bin Laden and the blast that tore into the side of the Cole. "We're looking at a whole array of possible suspects," said Joe Valiquette, spokesman for the New York office of the FBI.

"We have a lot of experience conducting these types of investigations, including the investigation of Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines and his plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean," he said.

Yousef was sentenced in 1998 to life in prison for playing a central role in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured at least 1,000 others. Yousef was sentenced to an additional 240 years for his 1996 conviction on charges that he had masterminded a plot to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, a plot that never was carried out.

Agents working on the bin Laden case are among those that have been dispatched to Yemen, the New York FBI office said.

U.S. Navy officials have said a small boat in a group helping to moor the Cole for refueling had been loaded with explosives and blew up alongside the ship, one of the world's most sophisticated guided missile destroyers.

Witnesses described two men aboard the boat standing to attention just before it exploded. Warning from bin Laden ... There has been no credible claim of responsibility for the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since the 1996 bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19.

But immediate suspicion fell on bin Laden. In August 1998, the United States fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles on eastern Afghanistan in an attempt to kill bin Laden.

In his first statement since December 1998, bin Laden warned Tuesday against another attack targeting him.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department responded by repeating its call for Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to turn bin Laden over for trial.

Bin Laden's statement was apparently issued from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's headquarters.

He said an attack would not kill him, and he vowed to continue his battle against the "enemies of Islam." He made no direct reference to the Yemen attack, but Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Monday denied bin Laden was involved.

"The dream to kill me will never be completed," bin Laden said in his statement, published in Pakistan's largest circulation Urdu-language newspaper, The Jang, meaning War.

"I am not afraid of the American threats against me," he said. "As long as I am alive, there will be no rest for the enemies of Islam. I will continue my mission against them."

... Denied by Taliban In a statement faxed to CNN, the Taliban representative in New York said Afghanistan protests "speculation by the media and others who point to Osama bin Laden as having a hand in perpetrating the terrorist attack in the port of Aden."

"Osama bin Laden, who has sought refuge in Afghanistan, remains in the country under strict supervision," the statement says. He is not permitted to make statements, communicate by any means, or conduct any activities that would threaten any other country, such as meeting with foreigners."

It continues, "The recent report of his statement in Pakistan's Jang newspaper is a fabrication that could not have come from Osama bin Laden or any responsible authority in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

Cole to take $4.5 million ride Meanwhile, the Navy assigned six U.S. warships to Aden harbor to assist the Cole and its exhausted crew. The destroyer USS Donald Cook, the frigate USS Hawes, and the fast combat support ship USS Camden are already on scene, providing relief crews, harbor security, damage-control equipment and food service for the battered Cole. They were joined Tuesday by two ships from the USS Tarawa Amphibious Readiness Group -- the USS Anchorage and the USS Duluth. The Tarawa itself is due to arrive Wednesday along with an ocean-going tug, the USNS Catawba.

The Tarawa, Anchorage and Duluth carry a total of 2,100 Marines.

"These are very large ships, (with) very capable medical facilities, large capability to provide food, laundry services, extra bunks for not only the military personnel, but some of the other U.S. government personnel ...," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley.

"It's felt that by moving some of the footprint of the various American investigators and salvage folks and what have you from hotels and other facilities ashore onto those naval vessels, that we improve our security posture", Quigley told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

Asked if the Navy has stepped up security to the point where "it would be difficult to get close to an American ship in a small boat," Quigley said, "Yes sir, that would be an accurate way to put it."

The Navy will pay $4.5 million to the Norwegian owners of the heavy-lift vessel Blue Marlin to carry the Cole back to Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs. The Blue Marlin, essentially a floating dry-dock, is expected to arrive in Aden within the next week.

The Catawba will pull the Cole to deeper water and help position it over the Blue Marlin.

Security procedures under review after Cole attack

Security was tight in Aden, Yemen, on Tuesday

October 17, 2000 Web posted at: 10:23 p.m. EDT (0223 GMT)

------In this story:

FBI lab receives evidence Cole's commander defended

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

From Jamie McIntyre CNN Military Affairs Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As investigators continue to probe the attack against the USS Cole, the Pentagon is preparing to appoint a senior retired military officer to conduct an independent investigation into security questions raised by the attack, according to Pentagon sources.

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

ALSO Sources say bomb-making materials found in Yemen apartment Six bodies recovered from USS Cole, 2 identified

The purpose of the investigation will be to determine if more could have been done to protect against the attack, and what can be done to prevent future terrorist attacks. At the same time, the United States is beefing up security in Yemen, where the attack took place on Thursday, to protect hundreds of U.S. personnel stationed there against any possible terrorist attack.

Three large amphibious assault ships have been moved to Aden to serve as secure floating barracks. Personnel who have been living in hotels and other on-shore facilities will be moved onto the ships "to improve our security posture," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman.

FBI lab receives evidence The USS Cole was crippled when a small boat blew up alongside the destroyer as it was docking in the Yemeni port of Aden for a refueling stop. The explosion, which ripped a large hole in the side of the ship, killed 17 sailors and injured 39.

The FBI and other U.S. investigators are trying to determine what caused the explosion and who was behind it. The first material recovered from the scene already has arrived in Washington and was sent to the FBI's crime lab.

In addition, bomb-making materials were found inside a Yemen apartment that may be connected to the Cole attack, law enforcement officials said.

Cole's commander defended An independent review into the Cole attack is not without precedent. In June, 1996, a similar review was ordered after the attack on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in which 19 U.S. airmen were killed by a truck bomb.

The Navy is considering an independant review of the Cole incident, like the one conducted into the June 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

In that case, the on-scene commander, Brig. Gen. Terry Schwalier, was denied a promotion and forced to retire because it was found he had failed to adequately plan for a known threat.

In the case of the Cole attack, Navy officials are defending the ship's commander, Kirk Lippold, saying there was no practical way to defend the destroyer against the attack. Adm. Vern Clark, Chief of Naval Operations, said the Cole's crew had no way to know that the boat that carried out the apparent suicide attack was not "part of a support group" helping the Cole dock.

Still, Navy officials said it's likely that security will be tightened in ports of call by requiring contractors to undertake background checks of their workers.

Officials concede it won't be possible to eliminate every risk in a port. No port is risk free, they say, not even in the United States.

Moreover, they say it's simply not possible to search every boat in a harbor, and a policy of firing on unknown craft would carry too great a risk of killing innocent civilians. More bodies retrieved from USS Cole

Gloria and John Clodfelter, parents of sailor Kenneth Clodfelter, talk on Monday to the media about their missing son

WEB EXCLUSIVE

On the scene with CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon

------On the scene with CNN's Mark Potter in Portsmouth, Virginia

October 17, 2000 Web posted at: 12:14 p.m. EDT (1614 GMT)

------In this story:

More wounded sailors leave Germany for U.S.

Navy sends support ships to Yemen

Warning from Osama bin Laden

RELATED STORIES, SITES

------

CNN Correspondent Matthew Chance contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Senior Writer Jim Morris

ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- U.S. Navy divers Tuesday recovered the bodies of six more sailors from the USS Cole, a warship crippled in a bomb attack in Yemen that killed 17 Americans. Tuesday's development brings to 11 the number of bodies retrieved from the destroyer. The remains of six other sailors have yet to be found.

Thirty-nine crew members were injured in last week's explosion in the port of Aden. Some of them have been released from the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, near the Cole's home port of Norfolk.

GALLERY USS Cole wounded return home

VIDEO CNN's Charles Zewe looks at how the families are coping with their losses

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

------

The parents of missing sailor Kenneth Clodfelter haven't given up hope

Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

RESOURCES Profiles of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole

Get the plugin

------Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

------Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole: 1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

Other survivors remain at the hospital and another group is due to arrive there later today.

In the search for bodies, divers going through water-filled compartments and crews with powerful metal cutters are slicing through the wreckage. Some of the bodies may have been trapped behind floors and walls wrenched apart by the blast.

The inability to quickly reach the bodies of all the missing crew members showed the extreme difficulties facing underwater teams trying to thread through a maze of jagged wreckage and collapsed compartments in the murky, oil-filled harbor.

More wounded sailors leave Germany for U.S. Four U.S. sailors seriously injured in the apparent suicide bombing of the Cole were flying home Tuesday, leaving behind two critically ill shipmates at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in western Germany.

The four -- three men and a woman -- arrived on an army bus and were carried on stretchers onto a C-141 transport plane. One gave a thumbs-up to watching reporters. Medical staff and eight family members also traveled with the injured.

Col. James Rundell, Landstuhl's deputy director, said the main injuries were bone fractures and all four were on pain medication. Most underwent surgery earlier this week. "They are in good spirits. They are good and stable to travel," he said.

Two sailors are now left at Landstuhl -- a man with multiple injuries and a woman who received burns over 14 percent of her body, mostly to her face and hands.

Rundell said the woman would likely be transferred in four to seven days, while the man would have to stay for at least 10 days.

The other 33 injured sailors, who returned to the United States over the weekend, were visited Monday by Gloria and John Clodfelter of Mechanicsville, Virginia, whose son Kenneth, 21, is listed as missing.

Visiting survivors of the Cole blast while they wait for official word on their son's fate "helps us get through this," John Clodfelter said. "My mother's heart tells me that he's probably gone," Gloria Clodfelter told CNN. "But my closure will be having something come home to me."

"The thing is," said John, "we are not going to be giving up on Kenneth, not until the Navy comes back saying, 'Hey, we have found him, this is his condition.'"

A memorial service for the 17 sailors killed on the Cole is scheduled for Wednesday in Norfolk.

Navy sends support ships to Yemen Thursday's blast blew open a 40-by-40-foot hole in the midsection of the ship at the waterline. The explosion destroyed an engine room and nearby mess area where sailors were eating lunch.

Witnesses described two men aboard the boat standing to attention just before it exploded.

Members of the U.S. armed forces and U.S. Southern Command employees attend a memorial service Monday for the dead sailors

The general manager of a Yemeni company that provides food, supplies and garbage pickup to the U.S. warships passing through, was released Monday after two days of questioning.

Ahmed al-Mansoob would not speak to reporters. But Abdullah al-Khalaqi, marketing director for the Al-Mansoob Commercial Group, denied any connection to the attack. "No one here is an extremist," he said in an office filled with caps, mugs and notes of thanks from visiting U.S. ships.

The two crew members of the garbage barge assigned to the Cole were also questioned and later freed.

Yemen, through its official news agency, said Monday that the explosion was considered a criminal act. It's a crucial distinction because President Ali Abdullah Saleh's backing is vital for FBI agents and other U.S. terrorism experts to work closely with Yemeni authorities.

The Navy said Monday that three additional ships -- the destroyer USS Donald Cook, the frigate USS Hawes, and the fast combat support ship USS Camden -- are providing watch relief crews, harbor security, damage control equipment, billeting, and food service for Cole.

"They will be joined by the fleet ocean tug USNS Catawba, expected to arrive shortly," the Navy said in a news release. "The USS Tarawa Amphibious Readiness Group consisting of Tarawa, USS Anchorage, and USS Duluth are also en route. They will augment Donald Cook and Hawes and provide additional force protection."

Warning from Osama bin Laden There has been no credible claim of responsibility for the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since the 1996 bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19.

But immediate suspicion fell on terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden -- accused in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. That August, the United States fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles on eastern Afghanistan in an attempt to kill bin Laden.

In his first statement since December 1998, bin Laden warned Tuesday against another attack.

He said an attack would not kill him and vowed to continue his battle against the "enemies of Islam." He made no direct reference to the Yemen attack, but Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Monday denied bin Laden was involved.

"The dream to kill me will never be completed," bin Laden said in his statement, published in Pakistan's largest circulation Urdu-language newspaper, The Jang, meaning War.

"I am not afraid of the American threats against me," he said. "As long as I am alive there will be no rest for the enemies of Islam. I will continue my mission against them."

Bin Laden's statement was apparently issued from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's headquarters.

October 17, 2000 Memorial service Wednesday open to families, military

NORFOLK -- A memorial service for the victims of the destroyer Cole's suicide attack will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Norfolk Naval station, and President Clinton and several of the nation's military leaders are expected to attend.

The service, however, will not be open to the general public. Only Cole family members and people with military or defense department identification will be allowed to attend, the Navy announced on Monday. ``The reason it is not open to the public is because there has been such a significant outpouring of support from the people of Hampton Roads that it is unlikely we will have the space for all the well-wishers to attend the event,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the Navy's Mid-Atlantic Regional Command.

The president has been in Egypt attempting to broker the Middle East peacemaking efforts between Israel and the Palestinians, but is expected back in time for the memorial, officials said.

He intends to address family members of the crew, as well as some of the injured crew members who are expected to have been released from the hospital by then.

Thirty-three injured crew members returned to Norfolk by air transport on Sunday from a U.S. hospital in Germany where they were taken following Thursday's explosion. About 20 of those crew members were expected to be released today from the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth.

Seventeen Cole crew members were killed when a small boat, apparently loaded with explosives, came beside the destroyer under the pretense of helping it moor to a fueling station in Aden, Yemen.

The Cole sustained a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of its hull and remains there today awaiting the arrival of a specially designed ship that can submerge, take the ship onboard and carry it piggy-back to Norfolk for repairs.

The memorial ceremony will be held on the 1,400-foot long Pier 12 at the north end of the Navy's waterfront. The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower will be tied to one side of the pier, with two of the Cole's sister ships -- the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers Ross and McFaul -- tied to the other.

Those who plan to attend must be in place on the pier by 10:15 a.m. to satisfy White House security requirements, McDonald said.

Expected to accompany Clinton will be Defense Secretary Richard Cohen and many of the military's top leadership, including Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark and Atlantic Fleet Commander Adm. Robert J. Natter.

October 17, 2000 Twenty of 33 hurt have been released from hospital

By LOUIS HANSEN © 2000, The Virginian-Pilot Fireman Apprentice Andrew Nemeth of Amherst, Ohio, was in the galley when the explosion rocked the destroyer Cole on Thursday. He plans to attend the memorial service for his fallen shipmates Wednesday at Norfolk Naval Air Station. Photos by Chris Tyree / The Virginian-Pilot. PORTSMOUTH -- After a busy but routine morning at port, Fireman Apprentice Andrew Nemeth planned an early Thursday lunch with a buddy aboard the U.S. destroyer Cole.

The 19-year-old stood in line, holding a tray and waiting for the first helping.

Outside, a small launch approached the warship.

Nemeth doesn't remember the sound of the explosion ripping through the side of his ship.

``All I remember was being thrown in the air,'' he said. ``I bounced off the ceiling.''

Nemeth was one of the fortunate sailors on the Cole, where Thursday's terrorist bombing killed 17 of his crewmates. Four days after the blast, the ship's crew and their families struggled to cope with the physical and emotional damage left by two suicide bombers.

By Monday night, doctors had discharged 20 of the 33 injured Cole sailors, including Nemeth, from Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

Four more seriously injured crew members were scheduled to be flown from a military hospital in Ramstein, Germany, to the Portsmouth facility tonight.

One injured sailor will be flown to Bethesda Naval Hospital today, and one seriously injured sailor will remain under care at Ramstein.

Navy spokesman Mike Andrews described the mood of Portsmouth Naval's Ward 4F, where the Cole victims were taken, as surprisingly upbeat since the injured sailors returned home Sunday night. They were greeted by joyous and relieved family members and friends.

Most television sets in the ward Sunday night were tuned to a pro football game, or the Major League Baseball playoffs, rather than the 24-hour news stations.

``It was very festive,'' Andrews said. By the end of Sunday evening, he said, the day's jubilation and relief had given way to quiet exhaustion.

Most of the injured sailors were expected to attend memorial services for their fallen shipmates Wednesday morning at the Norfolk Naval Station.

Some may not make the service, but not for lack of effort. One of the more seriously injured crewmen suffered a badly broken ankle and underwent surgery Monday, Andrews said. Before the surgery, Andrews said, the sailor asked the doctor to do ``whatever it takes'' to get him to the memorial service Wednesday.

Lt. Cmdr. Ed Simmer, staff psychiatrist at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, said members of the hospital's Special Psychiatric Rapid Intervention Team provided counseling and support throughout the day.

Groups of 10 sailors met with psychiatrists, social workers, nurses and chaplains to discuss the tragedy, Simmer said.

``Sailors do tend to maintain a stiff upper lip,'' he said.

Some family members of other Cole sailors came to the hospital Monday to find solace and hope.

John and Gloria Clodfelter of Mechanicsville still don't know the fate of their son, Kenneth, but they came to Portsmouth on Monday to be with his shipmates.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Kenneth Clodfelter is still listed as missing.

``I'm not giving up on my son until they find him,'' John Clodfelter said.

Their 21-year-old son, known as ``Cooter,'' may be in one of the sealed compartments of the damaged ship.

``There is no oxygen in those compartments, so we don't know what has happened,'' Gloria Clodfelter said. ``But we're not going to give up.'' The Clodfelters felt a strong need to be with their son's shipmates, she said. Her husband wore a Cole baseball cap.

``You can sit down and be miserable and think the worst thoughts,'' she said, ``or you can go and share with others.''

She said her tour of the ward included a hug for each of the injured sailors.

``I wanted to be here with them,'' she said.

Nemeth, the fireman apprentice, survived the bombing with bruises and several visible cuts. A 4-inch gash, covered by several white bandages, ran underneath his right eye from his cheek to his nose. He wore another patch of gauze on his right temple.

Nemeth spoke to several reporters Monday afternoon about Oct. 12, and the moment that changed his life.

The 19-year-old from Amherst, Ohio, enlisted 16 months ago, and has served 10 months on the Cole. The destroyer pulled into the Yemen port of Aden Thursday morning for a routine refueling.

Nemeth, a gas turbine technician, performed his duties to prepare the ship. He went topside and talked with a friend doing the refueling. ``It was pretty much business as usual,'' Nemeth said.

Normal security was in place, he said, with armed crew members on the deck.

Nemeth agreed to meet a friend for lunch about 15 minutes before the galley opened. He held his tray and waited for chow.

Outside, a small boat, laden with explosives, exploded next to the Cole's steel hull. The blast ripped an enormous hole in the warship.

Nemeth did not hear the explosion, but remembered its effect.

He smelled the strong stench of fuel as he floated across the galley and into the ceiling. The hall filled with smoke and soot. His eyes burned, and he could not see.

``I didn't really have a first thought,'' he said. ``I was looking for my shipmates.''

Nemeth said his shipmates stayed calm as they performed their emergency tasks. The crew hustled through the chaos to save the ship from sinking.

Nemeth groped through the smoke for his friends. He made it to a medical station, but found it already evacuated. A fellow sailor led him away from the smoke and twisted steel.

While being treated in a Yemen hospital, Nemeth said, he was told that the explosion was caused by a terrorist attack. Until then, he believed it had come from a fuel-line accident.

Nemeth said Thursday's attack has left him bitter and angry over the loss of his shipmates.

``It was a cowardly act,'' he said.

``Everybody knew everybody on the ship,'' he said. ``We were 300 strong. We were pretty much family.''

The mother and stepfather of Fireman Apprentice Andrew Nemeth, visiting from his Ohio hometown, wait for him to finish speaking to the press. Nemeth plans to attend the memorial service and then return to Ohio for a visit. Nemeth's mother, stepfather and grandmother greeted him when he returned to Hampton Roads. Monday, the three stood near him in the hospital room.

His mother clutched a half-filled plastic bottle, holding a pair of red roses. ``I've never been happier in my whole life when I got to see my mom,'' he said.

Nemeth will attend the memorial service for his shipmates, then return home to Ohio.

``I won't let it affect me,'' he said.

Giving in to fear is what the attackers wanted.

Nemeth remained clear-eyed.

``I ain't gonna let them do it.''

Six bodies recovered from USS Cole, 2 identified

An injured sailor from the USS Cole at Ramstein Air Base in Germany is carried Tuesday to an Air Force plane waiting to take him home

WEB EXCLUSIVE

On the scene with Mark Potter in Portsmouth, Virginia

Memorial service Wednesday morning in Norfolk October 17, 2000 Web posted at: 9:47 p.m. EDT (0147 GMT)

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Searching murky passages

Two wounded sailors remain in Germany

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CNN Correspondents Matthew Chance, Mark Potter, Martin Savidge and Carl Rochelle contributed to this report.

ADEN, Yemen -- U.S. investigators boarded the crippled USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, today, as the bodies of five of the 17 sailors killed in an explosion in the ship's hull arrived in the United States.

Investigators are in Yemen to determine the cause of Thursday's suspected terrorist attack on the Navy destroyer, which, in addition to killing 17 of the crew, left 39 injured.

The ship is listing to one side because of the gaping hole, about 25 square meters in size, blasted into its side. Eyewitnesses say two men steered a small boat heavily packed with explosives toward the Cole and stood at attention just before the explosion ripped into the ship's hull.

U.S. Marines have been assigned to provide security for the investigators and to work with Yemeni authorities to secure the port and the streets of Aden.

Bodies arrive in Delaware Flag-draped coffins containing the bodies of the five sailors arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday afternoon.

ALSO Clinton vows to track down 'cowards' in USS Cole attack Profiles of some of the Cole victims Damaged USS Cole calls itself 'Determined Warrior' Yemen has history of terrorism Ship attack reminds Norfolk of dangers

INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole and its external damage.

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TRANSCRIPT TalkBack Live: America Searches for Answers After Attack on USS Cole

VIDEO A guard of honor awaited the remains at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, reports CNN's Chris Burns

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CNN's Matthew Chance reports from Yemen on the condition of the damaged destroyer

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Scenes from the honor guard ceremony (October 13)

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CNN's Mark Potter is with families at the Norfolk Naval Station (October 13)

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RESOURCES Profiles of some of the Cole victims ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

INTERACTIVE Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole

GALLERY A summary of Thursday's events

INFORMATION Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

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------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

A U.S. military aircraft carrying the remains took off from Ramstein Air Base in Germany earlier Saturday, where they had arrived from Yemen on Friday. A small military ceremony was held after the coffins first arrived in Germany.

Upon the arrival of the bodies at Dover, a small ceremony or memorial service was planned that was expected to include some of the victims' family members.

A much larger memorial service is being planned for Wednesday in the Cole's home port of Norfolk, Virginia. It is likely that U.S. President Bill Clinton will attend.

The Navy released the names of the 17 dead on Friday. All but one were from the enlisted ranks and two were women -- the first female sailors killed in hostile action aboard a U.S. combat ship.

In all, 39 injured sailors were flown for treatment and evaluation at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, according to Lt. Terrence Dudley, a U.S. Navy spokesman in Aden. Some of the injured were taken to Germany after first stopping at a French military hospital in the east African nation of Djibouti.

The Navy had earlier said 33 sailors were wounded. Dudley said Saturday that six sailors, however, required treatment for post-traumatic stress.

Thirty-two to 34 of the injured Cole crew are expected to arrive in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, where they will be reunited with their families, then move on to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital for further treatment.

Security tight in Aden In Aden, Yemeni patrol boats cruised near the Cole early Saturday, maintaing a buffer zone around the stricken ship as U.S. investigators began their work.

Forty FBI agents and Department of Defense specialists from Washington's Foreign Emergency Support Team on Saturday joined a some experts who had already begun their investigation.

Their mission was to "advise, assist and assess" a probe that began almost immediately after the explosion Thursday, Dudley said.

So far, investigators have worked to secure what U.S. officials increasingly believe is a terrorist crime scene. Divers were examining the hull.

More than 100 FBI evidence and explosives experts, including those in the group arriving Saturday, were expected in Aden by the end of the weekend. Engineers team about to leave with special equipment A team of 24 engineers with special equipment was planning to leave Norfolk on Saturday to help with the recovery of the 10 sailors listed as missing, presumed dead.

It was expected to reach Yemen on Sunday. Adm. Robert Natter, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, called it a "recovery operation."

Asked why only five of the seven bodies found had been returned on Saturday, he said, "Two sets of remains were located in a position on the ship where we had difficulty in recovering those remains."

The bodies have since been identified and recovered and were to be taken to the U.S.

As for the missing 10, Natter said, "We know that there are spaces that are inaccessible, we know there are some remains in those spaces. We need to get into those and locate the remains that we anticipate finding there."

The Navy has contracted a heavy lift ship, the Blue Marlin, to set sail for Aden and carry the crippled Cole back to the U.S. Natter said that aspect of the recovery mission could take weeks.

An initial damage assessment of the Cole determined the ship's keel had not been broken and that the ship could be sailed back to Virginia.

Most of the remaining crew members would then be flown back to their home port. Sailors still on the Cole have been able to e-mail and call their families.

Explosion near British embassy If terrorism is proven, it would be the deadliest such attack on the U.S. military since the bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19.

Western diplomats in Yemen said the explosion seemed to be the work of a well- organized group with good connections in the port of Aden.

The Navy said the ship would be repaired and stay in service.

The Cole explosion came as anti-Western sentiment ran high in the Arab world -- with protesters condemning the United States and Israel -- sparked by the deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israelis that began September 28 in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

More than 200 miles from Aden in the capital, Sanaa, an explosion on Friday rocked the British Embassy. Windows shattered but nobody was hurt. Britain's foreign secretary said a bomb may have been flung into embassy grounds. Authorities were investigating.

Claims of responsibility Although militant groups have claimed responsibility for the blast, officials say none so far has been credible. One U.S. official said there is a trend among militant groups not to claim responsibility for attacks in order to elude intelligence gathering.

However, Omar Bakri Mohammed, a leader of Al-Muhajiroun, a London-based Arab militant group, said Friday he had received an international call claiming responsibility for the attack on the American ship. It was in the name of "Muhammad's Army," an extremist group previously known to be active only in the Chechnya and Dagestan, in Russia.

Bakri, who is known to have ties to terror suspect Osama bin Laden, said he had been skeptical of the claim but found it more believable after Friday's bombing of the British Embassy. The group had promised more attacks in its call Thursday.

Meanwhile, a close associate of bin Laden urged Muslims worldwide to attack U.S. and Israeli targets to avenge the deaths of Palestinians killed in the past two weeks of bloody and protracted clashes with Israel.

Ayman el Zawahri, who was found guilty in absentia of the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, faxed his call for "jihad," or holy war, to the Islamabad bureau of the Abu Dhabi channel of United Arab Emirates Television, its bureau chief Jamal Ismael said.

Islamic extremists have been active in Yemen. However, Yemen's Prime Minister Abdul-Karim al-Iryani said in March that bin Laden, at one time had "colleagues" in Yemen but now "has no place in Yemen, no military camps."

The United States accuses bin Laden of organizing a network with followers across the Mideast, including Yemen, and says he masterminded the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.

Yemenis Insist Accident Caused USS Cole Blast

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By Howard Schneider and Roberto Suro Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday , October 15, 2000

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 14 – Yemeni political and military officials are continuing to insist that an on-board accident caused the explosion that killed as many as 17 servicemen aboard the USS Cole, an attitude that could hinder American efforts to interview Yemeni nationals who might have knowledge about what American officials consider a suicide bomb attack.

Investigation efforts intensified today with the arrival of a 40-person emergency team assembled from the FBI, defense and state departments, adding to the corps of criminal investigators and military and diplomatic personnel already brought in from Washington, U.S. embassies throughout the region, and from the Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain.

Divers have begun scouring the bottom of Aden's crescent-shaped port, while aid continued to be given to the crew.

U.S. naval officials here announced that an additional six crewmen of the Cole have been evacuated to Germany to treat post-traumatic stress symptoms.

As the American team continued its forensic probe, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih toured the port where the explosion occurred, accompanied by several of his military personnel, and also met with U.S. Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine.

In a late evening news broadcast Friday, the local naval commander insisted that the hole in the side of the Cole was too big to be caused by the type of incident U.S. officials describe – a small harbor craft, pulling next to the destroyer, laden with explosives. He also insisted that U.S. technology was so sophisticated that electronic sensors would have warned the crew of the dangerous load approaching.

Brig. Mohammed Ali Ibrahim, commander of the Aden naval base, insists the incident "was not carried out by someone outside, and likely was the result of a technical malfunction inside the warship."

Meanwhile, Salih, while pledging full cooperation with the American probe, referred to it in reported remarks as a "technical" matter only.

American officials have already concluded that the explosion came from outside the destroyer, and worry that local attempts to downplay the likelihood of terrorism could impede their need to interview Yemenis, particularly those on duty at the port when the explosion occurred.

Those who carried out the attack would have at least needed advance knowledge of the Cole's arrival for its four-hour refueling stop, and probably also information about the mooring procedures U.S. vessels have used in the 15 months they have relied on the Aden port for refueling. The situation has raised concerns similar to those encountered when terrorists bombed an apartment complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 servicemen. Saudi officials limited the ability of U.S. personnel to conduct their own inquiry, and in the years since the U.S. has frequently complained about access to information about the probe which the Saudis conducted.

The 505-foot, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer came to this port on the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula for what was supposed to be a brief refueling stop while heading to the Persian Gulf to join the international fleet that polices United Nations sanctions against Iraq. Shortly after noon local time Thursday, a massive bomb exploded aboard a harbor workboat that had pretended to help the Cole moor at a refueling facility and then pulled alongside the warship.

In Washington, the first salvos were fired in what promises to be a vociferous debate over the wisdom of sending a Navy ship into a port known to harbor terrorists. As the State Department and the Pentagon pointed the finger at each other, congressional leaders called for a thorough investigation.

At the Pentagon, senior military officials said that specific threat assessments – compiled from reports by the State Department as well as military and civilian intelligence agencies – are conducted in advance of any port visit by a naval vessel in the Mideast. Aden was considered inherently dangerous enough that visits were limited to brief refueling stops. But U.S. warships had made 12 prior visits over the past 15 months without incident, and intelligence reports did not warn of any specific terrorist threat against the Cole, officials said.

"It is very clear to me that this was a very deliberate attack," Adm. Vernon Clark, chief of naval operations, told CBS News. "This kind of attack could not have been conducted without a great deal of planning and knowledge about what our movements were going to be and when the ship was going to arrive – all of the pieces that would make it possible for an attacker to come into proximity of the ship like they did."

The investigation initially will focus on searching the wreckage of the ship for any forensic evidence that could help identify the type and origins of the explosive that hit the Cole.

Navy divers examined the hull of the ship yesterday. While the overall structure appeared sound, they discovered that the hole ripped by the explosion was nearly twice the size originally estimated. With extensive damage now apparent below the waterline, the explosion is estimated to have torn open a hole 40 feet high by 40 feet wide in armored steel hull plates a half-inch thick.

Investigators will also work to identify the two men who were seen aboard the harbor workboat and who died in what appears to have been a suicide attack, officials in Washington said. The bombers appear to have infiltrated the harbor operations here, both to gain precise knowledge of when the Cole would arrive for a visit due to last only four hours and to gain access to the workboat that carried the bomb.

Bacon said Yemen's government has provided "very significant" assistance thus far to medical and security efforts as well as the opening phases of the FBI investigation. Officials monitoring the investigation in Washington said they are hopeful but not optimistic that the Yemeni authorities will provide access to the workings of the harbor offices here. The State Department reported earlier this year that Yemen is "a safe haven for terrorist groups" because of "lax and inefficient enforcement of security procedures."

"It is not exactly in their self-interest to help us prove that their port facility was penetrated by terrorists," said a U.S. official.

With its deep waters, high surrounding hills and a strategic location between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, Aden has been an important port for 3,000 years. But from 1970 to 1990 Yemen was divided, and Aden was the capital of a Marxist-oriented state often in conflict with its neighbors, including the more pro-Western republic that controlled the northern part of the country. Investment started to flow back into the harbor only after Yemen's merger in 1990.

Near the spot where the Cole is docked, the lights of a new cargo facility glisten, representing an investment Yemen hoped would allow it to compete with Dubai for shipping between the Indian Ocean and the West. Fears about security, raised by the attack on the Cole, could derail that effort.

The port has been closed by the Yemeni government, barred to journalists and, according to U.S. officials, cleared of any ships near the American destroyer. A special anti-terrorism security force of U.S. Marines arrived to protect the Cole and patrolled its decks while Yemeni government boats ensured that no other vessels approached the destroyer.

In addition, two other Navy ves – the USS Hawes, a guided missile frigate, and the USS Donald Cook, a guided missile destroyer of the same class as the Cole – arrived in Aden yesterday to provide reinforcements for the Cole's crew as salvage work proceeds.

Beyond the effort to clear away twisted metal in damaged areas of the ship, ensuring that the Cole suffers no more damage requires a constant effort. With a major engine compartment flooded, sailors must constantly check and reinforce bulkheads and hatches that are suffering unusual strains, Navy officials said.

Sailors from the Cole have been offered an opportunity to ferry over to the other U.S. ships for food and rest, but a senior Navy official said that despite the dire conditions on the damaged ship, its crew is reluctant to leave it even for a few hours.

With the injured under medical care, the first of the dead began the journey home, landing at Germany's Ramstein Air Base in a light rain. An Air Force honor guard was on hand to place the flag-draped caskets into hearses as a phalanx of sailors in dress blues stood by.

A memorial service for the bombing victims is tentatively planned for Wednesday at the Norfolk Naval Station. President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen are expected to attend. Until the bodies of the 10 missing crew members are found, the Pentagon will not declare them dead.

However, when asked if the casualty toll had reached 17, Cohen said yesterday, "because of the nature of the blast and the severity of the damage done, that is the assumption we are operating under."

The bombing is the most deadly attack directed against U.S. military personnel since a 1996 attack against an apartment complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19. Two years ago, simultaneous explosions ripped through the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing 12 Americans and hundreds of East Africans.

U.S. Team May Face Difficulties in Probe

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By David A. Vise and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday , October 14, 2000 ; Page A18

Investigators dispatched to Yemen to probe the bombing of a U.S. Navy warship face numerous obstacles, including a weak and possibly uncooperative central government and powerful anti-American sentiment, Clinton administration officials and outside intelligence experts said yesterday.

More than 160 Americans have been sent to Yemen as part of the investigation into the blast that killed at least seven sailors aboard the USS Cole Thursday and left 10 more feared dead. The team includes an FBI diving squad that can search the water for debris, FBI lab experts and officials from the State Department and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. But all can operate only with the permission of the Yemeni government. And should they need to widen their probe from the port of Aden, where the Cole was refueling at the time of the blast, they will encounter a nation with fragmented tribal rule and frequent kidnappings, experts said. Anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment runs high. Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih was cheered in the past week for saying that if Yemen bordered Israel, he would have sent troops to aid Palestinians in bloody clashes with Israeli security forces.

Salih has pledged his government's cooperation in the probe. But while the State Department says there is a significant terrorist presence in Yemen, Salih contends that his nation does not harbor terrorists and that Thursday's explosion was not an attack on the warship. Instead, government officials described the blast as an accident, according to the English-language Yemen Times.

"I'd be happier if the president of Yemen said this was a dastardly act, and we want to improve our relations with the U.S.," said Prof. Bernard Reich, an international relations specialist at George Washington University.

Unlike the bombings at U.S. embassies in East Africa two years ago that killed more than 200 Tanzanians and Kenyans, Thursday's attack killed no Yemenis, giving local officials less incentive to cooperate in the investigation, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Rand Corp.'s Washington office.

Another factor adding complexity to the probe, experts said, is the possibility that some people connected to the Yemeni government may be linked to the blast. Yemeni officials had advance information about the day and time that the Cole would be refueling in Aden harbor, information that someone involved in the attack also obtained, officials said. The ship was damaged when powerful explosives were detonated from a 20-foot harbor vessel that aroused no suspicion because it was assisting with the Navy ship's refueling.

"That is a very big problem. That permeates everything," said Victoria Toensing, former head of terrorism investigations at the Justice Department. "There are a lot of snakes in the grass."

Toensing also said many Yemeni officials, especially government security forces, will not welcome a large contingent of FBI agents conducting a terrorism investigation in their country. "There is always the ego of the local law establishment and you can understand that," she said.

In fact, the State Department lost a behind-the-scenes fight with the FBI yesterday over the number of FBI investigators that would be sent to Yemen, according to a federal official who attended a State Department meeting of officials who deal with Middle East affairs.

Barbara K. Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen and a former acting coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, had pressed for a limit of about 15 people in the FBI contingent, the official said.

"She felt that more than that would be overkill, and that sending hordes of FBI agents would just make the Yemenis clam up," he said. But Bodine apparently lost that argument. The Pentagon said yesterday that more than 100 FBI investigators were flying into Yemen, along with Marines from a Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team and a Federal Emergency Security Team. U.S. intelligence yesterday continued looking at a Yemeni terrorist organization called the Islamic Army of Aden--also known as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army--as a possible suspect in the suicide bombing. (Abyan is a province in southern Yemen.)

But intelligence officials questioned the group's sophistication and said they believe the perpetrator most likely had links to exiled Saudi Osama bin Laden, the Islamic militant who has been indicted for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

One senior intelligence official said other well-organized terrorist groups with a presence in Aden cannot be ruled out, though he emphasized that there is no hard evidence pointing to any particular group. Among those under scrutiny:

* Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed guerrilla organization that carried out at least one suicide bombing in Israel in 1996.

* Hamas, a group founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s that was responsible for three bloody bombings in Israel in early 1996.

* Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terrorist group also backed by Iran that was responsible for the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

"It could be any one of these groups," said Daniel Benjamin, former director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. "I would not rule out the possibility that some of these groups are working together."

A Syrian-born cleric living in Britain, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, said Thursday that he had received a communique from the Aden-Abyan Army asserting responsibility for the attack. But U.S. intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts remained skeptical.

"Traditionally, those who run around claiming credit are not the ones doing these things," said one senior intelligence official.

The group gained notoriety in late 1998 when its members kidnapped 16 Western tourists, four of whom were killed in a bungled rescue attempt by Yemeni authorities. Its leader was convicted in the Yemeni courts for masterminding the kidnapping and executed in October 1999.

The group's new leader was sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this month on weapons charges, according to a Saudi-owned daily newspaper in London. Ship upgrades may have prevented greater damage Earlier incidents had demonstrated vulnerability

10/13/2000

By Ed Timms / The Dallas Morning News

When it's all said and done, the apparent terrorist attack on the USS Cole may demonstrate the value of safety improvements that were incorporated into the design of one of the Navy's newest ships.

But the attack also reinforces a sobering reality for the nation's men and women who serve on missions overseas: Sometimes "showing the flag" comes at a tragic cost. And terrorists can strike anywhere, anytime.

The Cole, an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer, was refueling at a pier when a rubber speedboat exploded alongside, Defense Department officials said. The explosion created a 20-by-40-foot hole on the port side of the ship.

Experts say that the ship, commissioned in 1996, has highly sophisticated damage control systems and is structurally robust, in part because previous incidents revealed serious shortcomings in the design of warships.

Those include a 1975 collision between the cruiser Belknap and the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, a 1987 incident in which the U.S. Navy frigate Stark was struck by two Iraqi Exocet missiles, as well as damage inflicted on British ships by Argentine forces during the 1982 Falklands War.

Both the Belknap and the Stark were heavily damaged by fire and explosion.

"I was the flag officer on the Kennedy the night of the collision, and I walked on the deck of the Belknap about 36 hours later," said Eugene J. Carroll Jr., a retired Navy rear admiral and vice president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "It looked like the surface of the moon, with all of the lightweight materials that had melted and dripped down."

Several factors had prompted warship designers to use lighter metals, such as aluminum, which often melt at lower temperatures. As naval warfare became increasingly high-tech, ships' superstructures supported more and more antennas and dishes. Using a lighter metal helped to keep the ships from becoming too top-heavy. Also, a lighter ship might go faster, require less propulsion power and use less fuel.

And during the Cold War, when the threat of a nuclear exchange seemed more likely, some military planners thought extra armor would have little impact on whether ships survived relatively intact or not at all. But in time, Mr. Carroll said, designers went back to more sound and fundamentally engineered designs that could better withstand battle damage.

There are still weight concessions. Warship design invariably involves compromises on defensive armor, performance, weaponry, comfort and cost. But "survivability" is a very high priority.

"The point is to make the ships more damage-resistant and to make it easier to control damage," Mr. Carroll said. "They're getting away from the fire-susceptible materials."

The Cole has an all-steel hull and superstructure, large foam tanks for fire control, and an extensive sprinkler system. Vital areas on board are protected by extra layers of steel and Kevlar armor.

The ship also boasts a daunting array of weapons, including a 5-inch rapid-fire cannon, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, torpedoes and Phalanx "close-in weapons" that can spew hundreds of 20 mm rounds at an enemy airplane or missile.

But use of such weapons, or even small arms, may be problematic when a warship sails into the waters of another nation.

"When you're in the harbor, part of your defense relies on the host nation," said military analyst Austin Bay, co-author of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War. "That's the situation here. The host nation bears a large responsibility when a warship comes into port in peacetime."

The defensive stance, he added, can depend on the perceived threat. If there is intelligence suggesting that a terrorist attack is possible, the crew of a warship would probably take more precautions. And the host nation might be expected to provide more security.

Mr. Carroll said that taking security measures in a foreign port can be a tricky business.

Distinguishing between a boat or aircraft that innocently ventures too close to a U.S. warship and a terrorist attack could be very, very difficult – until the answer is apparent. The consequences can be dire, either way. In 1988, the U.S. cruiser Vincennes downed an Iranian airliner that it mistook for a hostile military aircraft, killing 290 civilians. That incident created a firestorm of controversy.

"If they had gone in with their guns loaded and ready, and started shooting a harbor craft, it would have been hell to pay," Mr. Carroll said of the Cole.

With the very real threat of terrorism in the world, U.S. military leaders frequently emphasize the importance of "force protection" – measures taken to reduce risks to service members.

The Middle East has long been viewed as a high-risk area. And, as one of the most visible icons of U.S. foreign policy, U.S. service members frequently have been targeted. For example, 19 U.S. airmen were killed in 1996 when a truck bomb exploded at Khobar Towers military housing project in Saudi Arabia. And 241 U.S. service members, mostly Marines, were killed in a 1983 bombing of their barracks in Lebanon.

Many thousands of U.S. service members are deployed to the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. And terrorists, experts say, could strike anywhere.

"There isn't any way to protect all these people all the time against all hazards," Mr. Carroll said. "Terrorists don't have big guns and bombers and submarines. They have to improvise, and they use truck bombs and boat bombs and all sorts of nasty things. ...

"The idea that we can be present all around the world, 365 days a year – and not, in effect, be painting bull's-eyes on our units for disaffected foreign elements – is wrong."

Friday, 13 October, 2000, 15:23 GMT 16:23 UK Yemen blasts spark terror fears

Experts are examining the holed US warship in Aden

A bomb explosion has damaged the UK embassy in Yemen a day after a suspected terrorist attack on a US warship in the country's main port Aden. Nobody was hurt in the embassy bombing. But the death toll from the Aden explosion rose to seven on Friday, and US officials said another 10 sailors were still missing and presumed dead.

The attacks have fuelled fears that western interests could be targeted by militants in the Middle East sympathising with the Palestinian cause.

The UK Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook - who is currently on a diplomatic mission in the region - said he understood that a bomb had been thrown over the embassy wall.

"By ill luck it hit a diesel generator, which created a substantial explosion," he told the BBC.

The blast occurred at 0610 local time (0310 GMT) on Friday in the capital Sana'a. Mr Cook said British diplomats in Sana'a had been on alert for some time because of "terrorist incidents" in the region.

Security was stepped up after the blast and investigators are being sent from London.

No clear link

It is still not clear whether it was linked to the explosion on board the US destroyer USS Cole in Aden on Thursday.

The explosion in Sana'a damaged the wall around the embassy compound, shattering windows in some of the buildings as well as in the Dutch embassy and a school nearby.

Dozens of sailors were injured in the Aden explosion

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Aden says people in Yemen are angry about the number of Palestinians who have died in the past two weeks of clashes with well-armed Israelis.

They accuse the West of leaning towards Israel.

US navy officials have confirmed that the blast which ripped through USS Cole was caused by explosives on a rubber boat that rammed into it.

US President Bill Clinton said it appeared to be a terrorist attack, and vowed to hunt down those responsible.

French surgeons have operated on 11 injured sailors who were evacuated to Djibouti, the French Defence Ministry says.

US investigation

US investigators have arrived in Aden to determine exactly what happened in the incident.

US navy officials believe the blast may have been a suicide attack. Eyewitnesses said two men were seen standing to attention on the inflatable boat.

Anti-western feelings are widespread in Yemen

Yemen has been close to the Palestinian movement since taking in hundreds of Palestinian fighters after Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

US embassies shut The US on Friday ordered its diplomatic missions in seven African countries - South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal and Djibouti - to close temporarily as a result of the Middle East crisis.

The US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were targeted in deadly bomb attacks in August 1998, blamed on the exiled Saudi Islamic leader Osama bin Laden.

Robin Cook says security has been stepped up

Other US ships in the region have put to sea to avoid danger.

The US State Department has also warned Americans worldwide to delay all travel to Yemen, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

The US has been criticised in the Arab world for its perceived support for Israel.

Yemen refused to join the US-led coalition against Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But the Yemeni authorities say the explosion in Aden was not deliberate.

The USS Cole is a guided missile destroyer with a crew of 350. It is armed with standard missiles and torpedoes.

The vessel was heading to the Gulf to join the US-led operation enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq.

Yemen Port Accustomed To Conflict

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By Howard Schneider Washington Post Foreign Service Friday , October 13, 2000 ; Page A29

AMMAN, Jordan, Oct. 12 –– In a sometimes lawless country of tribal rule and frequent kidnappings, the Yemeni port of Aden is in a class by itself.

Aden was the seat of a communist movement that evicted British colonialists in the 1960s and ruled over what became the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen until the country was unified in 1990. Before then, the hot, muggy port had been the scene of sometimes bloody factional fighting between wings of the Marxist ruling group.

In more contemporary times, it provided a starting point for Osama bin Laden's efforts at militant organization and proved among the most difficult areas for the government, based in the capital Sanaa in the northern part of the country. As recently as 1998, government officials acknowledged that an armed group called the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, based along a rugged coastline perfect for smuggling and subterfuge, had escaped Yemen's attempts to end its image as a sort of free zone for Islamic radicals and suspected terrorists.

In December of that year, the group seized several Western tourists, triggering a gun battle with government troops that left four of the hostages dead. Yemenis said at the time that the encounter led to the breakup of the group and pronounced that the government had won its fight.

The blast that crippled a U.S. naval vessel and killed at least six sailors today may prove otherwise.

The explosion was the first apparent act against U.S. interests in the Middle East in two weeks of clashes between Palestinians and Israelis that have raised anger in the Arab world over American military and political support for the Jewish state. Although the streets of major Yemeni cities were reported quiet tonight, residents of Sanaa said security was increased around the U.S. Embassy compound on the outskirts of the city.

The explosion came on the same day that Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih returned from a trip abroad, landing in Aden to a massive popular outpouring in support of recent statements he made implicitly criticizing such countries as Egypt and Jordan for not doing more in support of the Palestinians and saying that if his country bordered Israel he would send troops to join the fight.

"People were very pleased with his statements," said one Yemeni. "He was greeted in Aden for his heroic [remarks]." Raucous in its politics and as an outpost for radicals, Aden is a drab, industrial port of about a half-million people, its architecture a mix of old British colonial buildings and neo-Marxist concrete structures.

Once the world's third-largest port because of its strategic location in the Arabian Sea--considered a lifeline of the British empire as a transit point between India and the West--it went through decades of decline under communist rule. Some locals complain that since Yemen was unified, Aden still has received inadequate attention from leaders in Sanaa--providing the country's meager industrial muscle through its port but receiving the lesser share of the spoils.

Government investment in a new container port was supposed to begin changing that. The facility was placed under the management of a company from Singapore with hopes that Aden could again attract the attention of the world's shippers. But the bombing of a U.S. destroyer, which had stopped in Aden for refueling, is bound to raise fresh concerns about security.

The government "will be very concerned by something like this," said one resident of Yemen. "This is one of their priorities."

U.S. Navy Ship Hit in Yemeni Port; 6 Dead

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By Thomas E. Ricks and David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday , October 12, 2000

A U.S. Navy destroyer was hit by a small boat as it pulled into the Arab port of Aden, Yemen, today in an apparent suicide bomb attack. The explosion that followed killed at least six U.S. sailors, injured 36 and left another 11 missing. The USS Cole, an Aegis destroyer based in Norfolk, Va., was moving into the Yemeni port at the time for re-fueling, said Army Lt. Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

A Pentagon spokesman said there was no immediate indication of what group had carried out the attack.

President Clinton, speaking at the White House this afternoon, called the attack a "despicable and cowardly act." He ordered all Navy ships in the region to pull out of port as a safety precaution and imposed a heightened state of alert at U.S. military bases in the region.

Eyewitnesses said that a small rubber boat sped toward the ship as it was arriving in Aden about 5:30 a.m. EDT. An explosion followed, blowing a 20-foot by 40-foot hole in the side of the ship. The Cole, which carries a crew of about 350, was reporting to be listing at a 4 degree angle, but in no danger of sinking. "It is secure," said Lt. Col. Thomas. "There are no fires, and it?s not taking on water."

The boat in the attack was the kind that is commonly used in the port of Arden to help secure mooring buoys, Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, said at a Pentagon briefing this afternoon. As a result, its presence near the Cole would not have raised suspicions, Clark said.

While the cause of the explosion is still being investigated, "I have no reason to think that this was anything but a senseless act of terrorism," Clark told reporters.

The injured from the Cole were being taken to two local hospitals, but some of the more serious cases likely would be transported by air to U.S. military hospitals in Germany, Thomas said.

The State Department said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was placing a call to Ali Abdallah Salih, the president of Yemen, to discuss the incident. In a briefing this morning she said the United States would take "appropriate steps" if it is determined if the attack was an act of terrorism.

FBI officials said they are probing the blast to determine who is responsible. "We are dispatching overseas resources to the scene and we are deploying forensic, evidence collection, and investigative experts to investigate this matter," said FBI spokesman Steve Berry.

While declining to speculate about who might be behind the deadly explosion, Attorney General Janet Reno said she spoke this morning with FBI Deputy Director Thomas J. Pickard, who informed her that the bureau already was deploying investigative resources to the region.

"We will do everything we can to find out what caused this tragedy," Reno said. "The FBI is working together with the Defense Department and other investigative agencies to investigate the .?.?. incident." While the State Department formally has jurisdiction over overseas matters, Reno said the FBI moved swiftly on its own while coordinating with other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense. The Attorney General offered her condolences to the families of those killed in the blast.

"Our hearts go out to all those who survived, to those who were injured, to the families of those who were killed," the Attorney General said.

Reno declined to say whether the blast was a surprise or whether the United States had advance warning. Asked whether the federal government and U.S. naval and military facilities around the world had been placed on a heightened state of alert, Reno said, "That is being addressed."

The attorney general declined to say whether terrorism was at work or whether the blast was connected to the on-going unrest in the Middle East. "I don?t think we should comment until we have more complete facts," Reno said. She said she first learned of the blast this morning when she was notified by the Pentagon.

"What we?re trying to do is respond as quickly as possible," Reno said.

Because the Cole had just arrived in Aden and was due to remain there only for four hours to take on fuel, U.S. officials said they believed the attack was a planned act of terrorism. The ship had transited the Suez Canal on Monday and sailed down the Red Sea before arriving in Aden on the Gulf of Aden, according to Lt. Cmdr. Daren Pelkie, spokesman for the Navy?s 5th Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

U.S. vows to find terrorist attackers of Navy destroyer

The explosion blasted a 20-by-40-foot hole in the side of the ship at the waterline

6 U.S. sailors killed in Yemen; dozens injured or missing October 12, 2000 Web posted at: 4:45 p.m. EDT (2045 GMT)

------In this story:

Terrorism? U.S. says yes; Yemen doubtful

Pentagon: Small harbor craft carried explosives 'It has a big hole in it'

Ship was headed to Persian Gulf

Aden a frequent refueling stop

RELATED STORIES, SITES

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ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- A pair of suspected suicide terrorists on Thursday steered a small boat loaded with explosives alongside a U.S. Navy destroyer in Yemen and stood at attention as the small boat blew up, U.S. officials said.

GALLERY Images of the USS Cole

AUDIO Bashraheel Bashraheel, a reporter for Al-Ayam newspaper in Yemen, describes the scene

PART ONE: 396K/33 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

PART TWO: 224K/22 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

PART THREE: 276K/26 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

ALSO Damaged USS Cole calls itself 'Determined Warrior'

FBI sending veteran Mideast investigators to Yemen Ship attack causes U.S. embassies in Mideast to assess security Yemen has history of terrorism Ship attack reminds Norfolk of dangers

RESOURCES Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

------For updated Naval press releases involving the USS Cole, click here ------Click here for facts about the Arleigh-Burke class of destroyer ------Timeline of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole ramming

The explosion opened a large hole in the hull of the USS Cole. At least six U.S. sailors were killed, and dozens of other Americans were injured or missing. The missing are presumed dead.

"Our prayers are with the families who have lost their loved ones, or are still awaiting news," President Clinton said.

Terrorism? U.S. says yes; Yemen doubtful Although U.S. military sources said the possibility of an accident also was being investigated, a senior Pentagon official told CNN "We have every reason to suspect it was a terrorist attack. There is no reason to suspect it was anything else."

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, however, suggested a technical problem inside Cole caused the explosion. But he promised that his country -- located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula on the Red Sea -- would help with an investigation and would punish anyone found responsible.

Clinton said he had directed officials from the Pentagon, State Department and the FBI to go to Yemen to begin an investigation. "If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who is responsible and hold them accountable," he said.

"If their intention was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the Middle East, they will fail, utterly," Clinton said in the White House Rose Garden after meeting with his national security team. In addition to FBI agents going to the scene, the Pentagon also deployed its Fleet Anti-Terrorist Support Team, a group of about 70 specially trained Marines based at the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

The attack also led Defense Secretary William Cohen to cancel a planned trip to California.

No one has claimed responsibility for explosion; the two suspected suicide terrorists are unaccounted for.

Pentagon: Small harbor craft carried explosives The Cole has a crew of about 350, both men and women. In addition to the six sailors who were killed, 35 were injured and 11 others are missing and presumed dead, according to Pentagon officials.

The wounded were being flown to Germany for treatment.

This image shows the hole in the side of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden

The missing sailors are believed to have been working in the engine room area on the port (left) side of the Cole.

Initial reports from the Pentagon said the destroyer was rammed from the rear by a small attack boat packed with explosives at about 12:15 p.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT/9:15 GMT).

However, as more details became available, senior Pentagon officials told CNN said that the small vessel was the kind used in normal harbor operations in the port of Aden.

Pentagon sources said two men aboard the boat were helping the Cole fasten mooring lines in preparation for refueling in the port. After securing one line on a buoy, the pair steered their boat to the port side of the Cole and stood at attention just before their boat exploded, the sources said.

The sources said there was no doubt that the explosion came from the small boat, but it was not clear whether the boat rammed the ship.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Owen Pickett, D-Virginia, told CNN that two men "intentionally" steered the small boat to a "vulnerable" part of the destroyer that houses the engine and electrical rooms.

Pickett, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was briefed by Navy officials.

'It has a big hole in it'

An unidentified U.S. sailor injured in the explosion on the USS Cole, receives medical attention in a hospital in Yemen on Thursday

The blast tore a large hole in the ship's hull and caused flooding that left the 505-foot- long Cole listing four degrees to its port side.

The explosion was heard all over Aden, and ambulances rushed to the port. The injured, some of them suffering from burns, were taken to hospitals, and the Navy was flying a medical team from Bahrain.

The explosion "was so loud I thought it was from inside the hotel. The windows in 21 of our 33 rooms were shattered, and many of the television sets fell and broke," said Ahmed Mohammed Al-Naderi, manager of the port-side Rock Hotel. "Thank God, none of the guests or hotel personnel were injured."

Al-Naderi said he could see the Cole from his hotel. "It has a big hole in it, but it doesn't appear to be sinking.

Ship was headed to Persian Gulf The Cole had just arrived in Aden for a scheduled four-hour refueling stop on its way to the Persian Gulf when the blast occurred.

The explosion tore a 20-foot-by-40-foot hole in the port side, according to Lt. Cmdr. Daren Pelkie, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet. He said flooding aboard the Cole was contained and no fires were reported.

Pelkie said the Navy had received no specific threats prior to the incident. After the incident, all of the ships of the 5th Fleet were ordered out to sea as a security precaution and were placed on a higher state of alert.

The Cole is a ship of the Burke destroyer class and carries sophisticated Aegis weaponry. Its home port is Norfolk, Virginia. It was en route to the Persian Gulf to join the U.S.-led maritime interception operations in support of U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

In Norfolk, Adm. Jay Foley, the commander of the Navy's Atlantic fleet surface forces, said legal help and grief counseling was being made available for the families of crew members.

Aden a frequent refueling stop Because the Cole had just arrived in Aden and was due to remain there for only a short time, U.S. officials said they believed the small boat's mission was a planned act of terrorism. The ship had gone through the Suez Canal on Monday and sailed down the Red Sea before arriving in Aden on the Gulf of Aden, the Navy said.

A Norfolk Naval Base security officer searches a truck entering the base on Thursday

U.S. Navy ships commonly stop in Aden for refueling. The region has been swept in recent weeks by demonstrations, some of them violent and often with an anti-U.S. tone, sparked by Israeli-Palestinian clashes in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Pro-Palestinian rallies have been held daily in Yemen.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who talked by telephone with Saleh, said the Yemeni president offered condolences, visited the injured at a hospital and pledged support in the investigation.

At the Justice Department, Attorney General Janet Reno said FBI agents in the region have been sent to the scene and that the bureau was putting together investigators, explosives experts and an evidence response team to send as well.

The nearest FBI legal attaches are stationed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

U.S. Navy Ship Attacked

6 Dead, 36 Injured; Officials Call Suicide Attack ‘Well-Planned’

The U.S. Navy released this view of damage sustained on the port side of the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Cole after a suspected terrorist bomb exploded during a refueling operation in the port of Aden, Yemen, on Thursday. (U.S. Navy/AP Photo)

Oct. 13 — Six U.S. sailors are dead, 36 injured and 11 missing after two terrorists on a suicide mission attacked a U.S. Navy destroyer today in the Middle Eastern port city of Aden. ABCNews coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. RealVideo (download RealPlayer)

The explosion that tore a hole in the side of the USS Cole during a refueling stop at a facility in Aden, Yemen, was the result of a well-planned terrorist attack, U.S. officials said. The incident may be linked to alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s organization, U.S. officials have told ABCNEWS. At the White House, President Clinton pledged action. “If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable,” Clinton told reporters. “If their intention was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the Middle East, they will fail utterly,” he said. Defense Secretary William Cohen said no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, but said he ordered an increased alert level for all U.S. forces around the world, including those in the United States. The State Department today also warned that U.S. citizens should avoid travel to Yemen and urged all U.S. citizens abroad to “maintain a high level of vigilance.” Small Boat Assisted Refueling U.S. officials said the explosion occurred when a small boat assisting in the refueling of the USS Cole pulled alongside the destroyer, which was carrying about 350 crew members. The officials confirmed six sailors were dead and 11 others still missing. Two individuals on board the small boat were helping to gather up the mooring lines of the Cole, officials said. The individuals took one line out to an anchor buoy and were coming back for a second line when the explosion tore a 20-foot by 40-foot gash in the mid-hull section at around 12:15 local time, or 5:15 a.m. ET. The blast was strong enough to blow out windows hundreds of yards away. The damage was concentrated in one of the engine rooms and flooding has been controlled. The refueling stop was only scheduled to last between four and six hours and was not well-publicized. “A boat that was involved in mooring would not be expected to be a threat,” said Navy Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations.

Looking for Suspects Clark said the Cole had notified local authorities 10 to 12 days earlier that it would dock in Yemen. “I have no reason to think that this was anything but a senseless act of terrorism,” Clark told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. Although U.S. intelligence sources have no specific information bin Laden is responsible, they say he could be a suspect because his is one of the few groups capable of such an attack. The perpetrators must have had knowledge of the few hours the ship would be in port and the ability to infiltrate the harbor at that time, the ability to assemble strong explosives on the small boat; and they also had to know what part of the ship to target. Bin Laden is said to have strong ties to Yemen, as his father came from that country. Intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS that six days ago, the United States received information that bin Laden signaled one of his hit squads to “move out,” but there were no details on where it was headed.

Bravo Alert Clark said the destroyer was on Bravo alert, a moderate security alert level that requires posting guards, controlling entry and other security measures. The Cole was in compliance, he said. “That included armed personnel” on deck as it entered the port, he said. At today’s briefing, Clark presented photos showing a gaping hole in the midsection of the destroyer, where steel runs a half-inch thick. “Obviously this was a significant explosion,” he said. Navy officials said 36 sailors were injured and 12 were still missing in the aftermath of the blast. The Cole’s captain was alive and well, officials said. The injured were taken to a local hospital, and U.S. medical personnel were en route from Bahrain to the site of the explosion. The Cole is the only Navy warship currently tasked to patrol the Red Sea, officials said. The Navy has ordered all other ships now in the Middle East put out to sea.

Clinton ‘Horrified’ by Attack U.S. officials said they would take appropriate action. At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared: “We will hold those who committed it accountable and take appropriate steps.” She said this is no time for the United States to “retreat from our responsibilities” in the region. “We are operating in a world that is filled with a variety of threats. But that doesn’t mean that we can crawl into an ostrichlike mode. We are eagles,” Albright said. President Clinton, who said he was horrified by the attack, has issued orders to do everything possible to find out who is responsible. He was informed of the explosion at 7:18 a.m. ET. Clinton notified Cohen at 7:30 a.m. ET. Members of Congress expressed their sadness and outrage. “We will find those people,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., “There will be a heavy price to pay. We cannot allow these kinds of acts of terror to take place.” The FBI has already dispatched local agents to the scene, Attorney General Janet Reno said today and is sending investigators, explosive experts and an evidence response team. A Marine Corps anti-terrorism team is also en route. The FBI’s legal attaché from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is also being dispatched to the scene.

Families Gather in Norfolk The Cole, a Norfolk, Va.-based destroyer armed with conventional missiles and torpedoes, was in Aden while on a refueling stop as it traveled from the Red Sea to Bahrain. It is assigned to the USS George Washington carrier battle group now operating in the Persian Gulf region. The Cole left Norfolk in June for a six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf. The Navy has issued an information line, 1-800-368-3202, for the families of the sailors. The Navy also has established a gathering place for the families at the Norfolk base, said Adm. John Foley, where they can receive information updates, legal assistance and counseling.

ABCNEWS’ Barbara Starr and John McWethy at the Pentagon, ABCNEWS.com’s Michael James, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. About Yemen Oct. 12 — Anti-Western terrorists and extremists pose a continual problem for the government of Yemen, a poor desert nation along the Indian Ocean coast south of Saudi Arabia. Security forces have been on edge since 16 tourists, including four Americans, were abducted in late 1998 by an anti-Western group; four tourists died in clashes between the kidnappers and government forces. The U.S. and Yemeni governments have regularly warned that American tourists aren’t safe in the country. The State Department advises taking armed guards when driving between cities, and identified Yemen as one of four countries where anti- American terrorism was on the rise in 1999. But Yemen’s government isn’t anti-American — nor are most of the frequent kidnappings that go on there, more than 100 since 1991. Yemeni tribesmen have used Westerners as bargaining chips in their struggles with the government to get paved roads, schools and other aid; they generally treat the captives as guests and release them unharmed. The republic of 17 million, almost all Arab and African Muslims, is an old- fashioned place where men carry swords and women are fully covered in traditional garb. It’s a rough place, too, still recovering from a minor 1994 civil war between its northern and southern halves; land mines are still scattered around Aden, an ancient port that’s the nation’s main commercial city. Yemen started exploring its oil reserves in the 1990s, but most people still work as farmers, herders and craftsmen. The country was much wealthier thousands of years ago — the biblical Queen of Sheba, around 950 B.C., led a wealthy spice-trading kingdom which lasted until the Arab conquest in 630 AD. — Sascha Segan, ABCNEWS.com

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4 U.S. sailors killed in Yemen; dozens injured or missing October 12, 2000 Web posted at: 1:48 p.m. EDT (1748 GMT) ------In this story:

Clinton meeting with national security team

Evidence of terrorism?

'It has a big hole in it'

Ship was headed to Persian Gulf

Aden a frequent refueling stop

RELATED STORIES, SITES

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ADEN, Yemen (CNN) -- At least four U.S. sailors were killed, and dozens of others were injured or missing Thursday after an explosion, likely from a suicide terrorist attack, blew a huge hole in the side of the USS Cole as the Navy destroyer sat in the Yemeni port of Aden.

GALLERY Images of the USS Cole

AUDIO Bashraheel Bashraheel, a reporter for Al-Ayam newspaper in Yemen, describes the scene

PART ONE: 396K/33 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

PART TWO: 224K/22 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

PART THREE: 276K/26 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

ALSO Damaged USS Cole calls itself 'Determined Warrior'

RESOURCES Information for families of sailors serving on the USS Cole:

1-800-368-3202

MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole ramming

U.S. officials said initial accounts suggested the blast was the result of a suicide mission while the Cole was stopped for fueling.

Although U.S. military sources said the possibility of an accident also was being investigated, a senior Pentagon official told CNN "We have every reason to suspect it was a terrorist attack, there is no reason to suspect it was anything else."

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he was sure it was not a terrorist attack, and suggested a technical problem inside the ship caused the explosion. But he promised Yemen would help with an investigation and would punish anyone found responsible.

Clinton meeting with national security team There has been no public comment on the incident from President Clinton who was at his home in Chappaqua, New York, when the explosion occurred. He was notified at 7:18 a.m., according to a White House spokesman, who said Clinton was "obviously horrified."

The president returned to Washington on Thursday morning and immediately on his arrival at the White House went into a meeting with his national security advisers. At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the United States "will take appropriate steps" if terrorism is confirmed.

The FBI is sending agents to the scene. The Pentagon also deployed its Fleet Anti- Terrorist Support Team, a group of about 70 specially trained Marines based at the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

Evidence of terrorism? The Cole has a crew of about 350. In addition to the four sailors who were killed, 35 were injured and about 10 others are missing and presumed dead, according to Pentagon officials. The wounded were being flown to Germany for treatment.

The missing sailors were believed to have been working in the engine room area amidships on the port side of the Cole, the apparent target of the blast, U.S. military officials said. The suspected attackers also were unaccounted for.

Albright, speaking at a news conference Thursday, said she had discussed the situation with Yemen's president

Initial reports from the Pentagon said the Cole was rammed from the rear by a small boat packed with explosives at about 12:15 p.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT/9:15 GMT).

As more details became available, senior Pentagon officials told CNN said that the small boat was the kind used in normal harbor operations in the port of Aden.

Pentagon sources said two men aboard the boat were helping the Cole with mooring lines. After securing one line, the pair steered their boat back to the port side of the Cole and stood at attention just before their boat exploded, the sources said.

The sources said there was no doubt that the explosion came from the small boat but it was not clear whether the boat rammed the ship.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Owen Pickett, D-Virginia, told CNN that two men "intentionally" steered the small boat to a "vulnerable" part of the destroyer that houses the engine and electrical rooms.

Pickett, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was briefed by Navy officials.

No one has claimed responsibility for explosion in Yemen, located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula on the Red Sea.

'It has a big hole in it' The blast tore a large hole in the ship's hull and caused flooding that left the 505-foot- long Cole listing four degrees to its port side.

Reno said FBI agents would help in the investigation

The explosion was heard all over Aden, and ambulances were seen rushing to the port. The injured, some of them suffering from burns, were taken to hospitals and the Navy was flying a medical team from Bahrain.

Al-Naderi said he could see the Cole from his hotel. "It has a big hole in it, but it doesn't appear to be sinking.

Ship was headed to Persian Gulf The Cole had just arrived in Aden for a scheduled four-hour refueling stop on its way to the Persian Gulf when the blast occurred.

File photo of the USS Cole

In Norfolk, Adm. Jay Foley, the commander of the Navy's Atlantic fleet surface forces, said legal help and counseling was being made available for the crew's loved ones.

Pro-Palestinian rallies have been held daily in Yemen. Albright said she had talked by telephone with the president of Yemen, and said he offered condolences, visited the injured at a hospital and pledged support in the investigation.

The nearest FBI legal attaches are stationed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

USS Cole one of the Navy’s finest

Destroyer on mission to enforce Iraqi oil embargo The USS Cole in a file photo.

By Bobbi Nodell MSNBC

Oct. 13 — The Navy’s USS Cole, severely damaged by a blast in Yemen Thursday, is a state-of-the-art destroyer helping enforce the U.N. oil embargo against Iraq. The ship, commissioned in June 1996, had a crew of 293 sailors at the time of the explosion.

THE COLE is a $1 billion guided-missile destroyer, part of a group providing protection for the USS George Washington aircraft carrier group. The aircraft carrier’s strength is offensive action. They rely on flotillas of surface ships - cruisers, destroyers and frigates armed with anti-aircraft, surface-to-surface and anti-submarine weaponry. The USS Cole, which left its home port of Norfolk, Va., on June 21, had been operating in the Mediterranean for more than three months. It was scheduled to join an ongoing operation by U.S. and allied warships interdicting ships smuggling oil and other items into and out of Iraq in defiance of a U.N. embargo. The ship had crossed the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and stopped at the port of Aden in Yemen, a traditional refueling stop for Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. The ship was expected to leave the port after several hours for a port visit in Bahrain, the tiny Gulf island that is the headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, before starting work monitoring the Gulf for embargo busters. At the time of the blast, dozens of unsuspecting targets - nearly all of them enlisted personnel - were in the ship’s eating and cooking areas, as well as an engine room and an auxiliary engineering room. The Cole had armed guards on board but its heavy machinery were unmanned as it was refueling. The explosion left a gaping hole in the destroyer, which is built of steel and fortified with 70 tons of armor.