- Car bombs exploded
outside the U.S. embassies
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
- 224 people died,
including 12 Americans.
- It was an attack
against a U.S. embassy.
It's the purview of
the FBI to go over there.
It was decided that
we will be going.
- We knew we were
walking into something
that I don't think any of
us had ever seen before.
- The worst international
t*rror1st incident
on African soil.
- Every piece of glass on
that building was blown in.
- People were just
moving blocks,
trying to locate people
in this pile of rubble.
- One of the witnesses saying
that there was probably
one guy, may have gotten away.
- We don't know
his first name,
we don't know
his last name.
- Maybe he could be
a former mujahideen.
- This one lead comes in.
He said, I've got
an individual here
who sort of stands out.
But it's in an area that
even the police are like,
"Ohh, we don't really
go in there."
Is this somebody trying
to lure us in and k*ll us?
- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.
Drug busts, mob stings,
t*rror1st takedowns.
- Get down!
- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze!
- fbi.
- fbi!
- Action!
- But they don't
know the half of it.
What really goes down?
We save that
for each other,
when we're talking
agent-to-agent.
This is "FBI True."
- Hey, it's her!
- Oh, my God, it's so
good to see you guys.
Come on.
Let's go in.
- Kristy Kottis is a
24-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked gangs,
crimes against children,
as well as human
and drug trafficking.
Kottis was the supervisor
of the FBI's
threat response squad,
overseeing the Bureau's
response to terrorism threats
in New York City.
- So here we have these
two embassies bombed.
And this is like--
this is U.S. property.
This is like a piece of
Kansas or Massachusetts,
just overseas.
- Car bombs exploded
outside the U.S. embassies
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
- The gravitas--
death, U.S. citizens,
citizens of the country,
the Foreign Service Nationals
that work there.
Nothing like this has
ever happened before.
- The worst international
t*rror1st incident
on African soil.
- Where were you guys
when you first heard
about the bombings?
- I remember it very clearly.
I was actually on the BQE
heading to the Battery Tunnel,
when I heard it on the news.
- Over the course of his
28 years with the FBI,
John Anticev was involved
with major investigations
around the world.
As a member of New York's
Joint Terrorism Task Force,
Anticev helped
thwart attacks
on the Holland Tunnel
and the United Nations.
- It said there was a bombing
in two embassies in Africa.
And you know, being on
the JTTF in New York,
I said, I don't think
I'm going to be sleeping
at home tonight, because the
reports were coming in that--
that it was pretty bad.
- 224 people died,
including 12 Americans.
- It was an attack
against the U.S. embassy.
It's the purview of
the FBI to go over there.
It was decided that
we will be going.
- I was working
Irish terrorism.
My supervisor, he said,
you can't go.
You've got too
much on your plate.
I said, "No. This is why I'm in
New York, and I want to be
included like everybody else."
He said, "All right,
you're going to go.
Don't eff this up."
- Abigail Perkins
was a lawyer
before she joined the FBI
in 1995.
She put her legal training to
use in a broad range
of Bureau investigations
into t*rror1st acts,
from the African
embassy bombings
to the attacks on 9/11.
- I had no idea
what had happened
until I walked
into the command post.
I see these guys,
and all the activity.
My supervisor
at the time is Pat D'Amuro,
the ASAC of the JTTF.
And he says, "Nairobi
or Dar es Salaam,
which one do you want
to go to?"
And I went,
"I'll go to Nairobi."
And he said,
"Wow, that was fast.
Why are you picking Nairobi?"
I said, "I don't know
where Dar es Salaam is."
- Stephen Gaudin
joined the FBI in 1991.
He participated
in investigations
in the Middle East
and Africa,
and was directly
involved with the hunt
and capture of several
al-Qaeda operatives.
- And I said, "But before
I go, why am I going?"
They said, "But listen, we
know you're new to New York.
"We know you're
new to terrorism.
"You're one of the
only guys on the JTTF
"who's actually on the SWAT
team as well,
"so you're going to have
a different role than what
these guys are going to do."
- What is your role?
- Don't let anything
happen to Pat,
and don't let anything
happen to the team.
So I knew it was
going to be more
on the overwatch
or physical security role,
as opposed to an
investigative role, which--
I felt more comfortable on
that side, at least initially.
We're going 7,000 miles
away from home,
split into two teams,
a Nairobi team
and a Dar especially Salaam
team.
The gravity of it was really
hitting, because we knew there
were American citizens k*lled.
We knew hundreds
of other people
k*lled or seriously injured.
We knew there were still people
trapped in the buildings.
We knew we were
walking into something
that I don't think any of
us had ever seen before.
- In those first
few hours,
we're not getting
any real intelligence.
What we're seeing is what
we've seen on the news.
- b*mb blasted out the back
end of the embassy, I believe.
I haven't got any numbers
or names of anybody who--
any injuries or casualties,
but there were plenty of.
- And you know,
we can't wait till
we get all the proper
intel and figure out
exactly what happened.
That would just be wasting
too much time.
Figuring out who's
going to go--how?
We don't have an FBI plane
that's going to take us
to Nairobi.
You have to reach out
to the U.S. Air Force
and get them on board.
- Once we got on the plane,
I actually started to feel
more comfortable because
it was a military plane.
It was a C-5, and I was
a paratrooper in the Army.
So when I got on that,
I almost felt at home.
- And it was a 16-hour
flight to get there.
We refueled in the air.
I slept the entire time.
People were amazed.
I said, that's one of
the things I do well.
- About 36 hours between
the expl*si*n
and by the time
we hit the ground.
- As happy as I was
to be on the ground,
that's when I think I
started to get to the, uh-oh,
we ain't in Kansas no more.
That's when
the realization of,
how much over our heads
are we going to be
when we get taken
to wherever this is?
What's it going to look like?
The reality of it started
to really sink in for me.
- There's a picture
of us standing there
looking at this with
just this, like, oh, my gosh.
- It was total devastation.
Even though the
embassy was still standing,
the force of
the expl*si*n ripped
through all the windows,
from front to the back.
Nothing was usable
in the embassy.
It was completely
destroyed on the inside.
There was the huge office
building to the left.
Huge, about 45 stories high.
Every piece of glass on
that building was blown in.
And then there was
a big pile down the middle
between those
two structures,
was what looked to me like
the remnants of a building
that had collapsed.
And that was the girls'
secretarial college.
They were in the building when
it went flat and pancaked.
- There were people still
trying to make rescue.
People were just moving
blocks with their hands,
trying to locate people
in this pile of rubble.
- As much as I remember
the sights and the sounds,
it's the smell I remember
more than anything else,
because everything
smelled burnt and dead.
We're taking that in.
OK, if we had a response,
someone obviously
should go into the
embassy to get briefed,
to figure out what's going on.
There's no embassy.
There's nobody.
And this investigative
team is standing
in front of this collapsedness,
this--this nothingness.
And 90% of us are like,
"Oh, my God, this is real."
- So when you guys
land in Kenya,
is there a team
that's sent directly
down to Dar es Salaam?
When do you go there?
- There is a team.
- Right.
- Washington field office
was in charge
of the entire investigation,
because they were
the extraterritorial office
responsible for that sort
of investigation.
We sort of supplemented them.
So a contingent of them
went down to Dar es Salaam,
and then we had sprinkled
in some New York agents.
And then we had
a comparable group in Kenya.
- A little work set-up
force is made for us
at the cafeteria of
the Canadian consulate,
which is on the same street.
And that's where
we're basically--
our little command post
is set up.
- The rest
of the investigators,
we started working out of
the Kenyan police station.
- So they broke
us up into teams,
one FBI, or two FBI agents
with one or two
Kenyan police officers.
And then those leads
started coming in,
and we had to turn
over all those rocks.
And then eventually,
a more substantive lead
actually started to come in.
- John, you're the team leader.
What's the next step?
Where do we go?
- We have to figure out,
first of all, what happened?
What was the exact
time that it happened?
How did they breach the gate?
We wanted to interview as
many witnesses as we could,
to try to figure out how
many vehicles were involved.
What kind of vehicle had
the expl*sives in it?
Was there more
than one vehicle,
was there a getaway vehicle?
By interviewing as many
witnesses as we could,
we started to piece together
what occurred in those final
seconds before the bombing.
We knew that one vehicle tried
to breach the front gate.
Somebody shot a g*n
in the air.
Another individual lit off
a flashbang
or small expl*sive device.
We had other witnesses saying
that there was probably
one guy who threw
the flashbang,
who was out of the vehicle,
may have gotten away.
- There were tons
of calls coming in,
people with all kinds of
agendas providing information.
This one lead comes in.
It's an individual that
calls from the Ramadan Hotel.
And he said,
"I've got an individual here
who sort of stands out,
and he's staying at my hotel."
This area was called
Eastleigh,
and it was where Somalis
typically hung out.
So if you weren't Somali,
you know,
you sort of
stood out in this area.
So he said, "He is not Somali,
he's Arab.
"He doesn't have any money.
"He doesn't have any
travel documents.
"He's got brand new
clothing but no luggage.
"He's making phone calls at
this payphone to try to get
some money and documentation."
He said, "There's something
strange about this guy
that doesn't add up,
there's something to this."
But it's in an area that
even the police are like,
"Ohh, we don't really
go in there."
It's a really dangerous place.
This is, like, day two
or three on the ground.
Is this somebody trying
to lure us in and k*ll us?
- That's when
Pat D'Amuro says,
"Put your SWAT stuff away.
I need you to do
FBI work right now."
And I was like, "Are you sure?"
He's like,
"This is your new role.
"Take this lead, work with the
Kenyans, go find this guy.
I think this one
could be significant."
- We got to figure out who
this guy is and go get him.
- And I'm reading the lead, and
as good as the information was
that there was something
suspicious about this person,
he just didn't fit in
was the key thing
that I was focusing on.
So I'm like, OK, we've got to
find a guy who doesn't fit in.
But there's no description
of him, like how tall he is
or whatever, how fat--nothing.
We don't know
his first name,
and we don't know
his last name.
You want me to go to
Somalitown and find Fnu Lnu?
Oh, this should be easy.
Go find someone who we
have no idea who he is.
They go inside the hotel,
and they're gone a while.
All of a sudden,
someone walks up
to the car with his back to it
like this,
and I can't see his face.
And he's just leaning
at the window.
He's like, "Listen
"The guy that
you're looking for,
"he's not in this
hotel anymore.
"He's now moved up to a hotel
around the corner up there,
called the Iftin Lodge."
He walks into the crowd,
and I never see him again.
The police come out
some minutes later.
We get up to the Iftin Lodge,
and they come back
with this--
this fella here.
We notice about
him very quickly is he had
stitches along
the front of his forehead.
Both his hands are
very heavily bandaged,
and he's got what
definitely appeared to be
brand new clothes on.
He doesn't belong here.
He has this little
slip of paper here,
and it's an intake form.
And it shows
that he was treated
on the 7th of August, 1998,
the day of the bombing,
at the MP Shah Hospital.
The MP Shah Hospital
was the hospital closest
to the embassy, and that's
where most of the victims
were being sent.
On that hospital card,
it has his name of
Khalid Saleh Salim
Bin Rashid
is written on there, so we're
just calling him Khalid now.
And you don't have
to be Sherlock Holmes
to realize this guy was
near the embassy, injured,
and was taken to
the local hospital.
Minimum, he's a witness.
It doesn't make
him a t*rror1st.
It doesn't make him
a bad guy, even.
It just--there's
more to this story,
and we've got to get him out
of this area and back there.
So we put him in the truck,
immediately start driving
as fast as we can
back to Nairobi.
It's a good hour drive,
bumpy road, all of that.
The radio isn't working.
I couldn't radio ahead
to let anybody know
we were coming.
By the time we come back,
I'm like,
"Everybody's going
to be so pumped!"
And we get back,
it's a ghost town.
Pat D'Amuro, the assistant
special agent in charge,
he's the head
of the JTTF in New York.
Finally find Pat D'Amuro. I'm
like, "Pat, what happened?
"We got Fnu Lnu!
He's like, "Oh, listen.
"Never mind that right now.
"In the couple hours
you were gone,
"this case has taken
a big turn.
"There was a guy captured
in another country
"who's already made some
admissions of involvement
in what happened here."
That's the big lead.
- The Pakistanis had
captured somebody in, uh--
was it Karachi, I believe.
He had a bad passport,
and he left on the day
before the bombing.
And they were holding him
with the bad passport,
and then somebody
said, "Wait a minute,
"this guy just came from
Nairobi on the day before.
"He's got bad documents.
And the guy's name was
Mohammed Saddiq Odeh.
- Pat was like, "That guy's
being flown back to Nairobi.
That's the interview."
- Everybody can't
work the guy coming in
from Pakistan, you know.
- Right.
- So he has to stick with it,
and he did.
- Like John said,
we couldn't just drop him.
We didn't just, like,
OK, let this guy go,
it doesn't matter.
Let's find out more about him.
Who are you?
What are you doing here?
There were a couple
of things that
didn't really
make perfect sense,
and one of them
was his clothes.
Then we're like, "Well, what
did you do with your clothes?"
He said, "What clothes?"
And I'm like, "Well,
you know, these are
new clothes you have on."
He's like, "No, these
are the clothes I wore."
He doesn't have
a drop of blood on him.
He doesn't have
any dust on him.
He doesn't have any holes
in his shirt.
No. If you got blown
up at that bombing,
your appearance should
look a little different.
We took all kinds
of photos of him.
When we take off
his shirt, his back is where
all the main part
of his wounds occurred.
And when I tell you--
he looked like
the top of an American
football, his back.
That's how big and clumpy
the stitches were.
So again, the logical thing
was, he--
wherever he was,
he had gotten hit
with something in the back
and blown this way,
falls on his hand,
falls on his head.
And that's why--
I'm theorizing here,
but that's what it
looked like to me.
Well, two things happened.
The interpreter,
she kept on saying,
"Steve, I don't think
you understand.
"This guy speaks
such a high level
"of Fusha Arabic, which would
be equivalent to, like,
"Shakespeare in English.
"This guy's got a master's
degree, I'm telling you.
"There's something
fishy about this guy.
This guy is not a street kid.
This kid's well-educated."
Something wasn't making sense.
He tells this very likable,
believable story, actually,
of how he ends up where he is.
And he basically says,
"Listen, I'm from Sanaa, Yemen.
"And one day about a year ago,
I'm in the mosque, praying,
"and I meet this guy
from Kenya named Haroon.
"And Haroon and I
strike up a friendship,
"and I show him in our culture.
"And when he leaves from his
vacation to Sanaa, Yemen,
"he said, 'Let's someday--
"you come to Kenya, and I
will return the hospitality.'
"I come to visit him,
and he's supposed
"to pick me up at the airport.
"But he doesn't show up
for some reason.
"So now I don't know
what to do after I clear
"immigration and get my
luggage, and I go out
"and I find the taxi driver.
"Luckily, I found
a taxi driver who said,
"'Ah, you don't speak
the local language,
"'but you do speak Arabic.
"'I'm going to take
you to Eastleigh
because the Somalis there all
speak good enough Arabic.'"
He was very calm.
Like, he was unflustered.
He's just like, why are
you bothering poor me?
But we can't just
go on his narrative.
We've got to
somehow corroborate
or disprove what he said.
So a bunch of agents,
we spend the night
in the Nairobi Airport to
try to find his arrival card.
So when I see this card,
I'm like, holy crap.
He lied to us.
Because you don't get
to the taxi stand,
you don't even get
to your luggage,
until you fill out this card.
And it's filled out,
"I will be staying
at the Ramadan Hotel
in Eastleigh."
So I can't wait to get in
and confront him with that.
The next morning,
we go in and I put
the immigration card down.
I'm like, "Haha!
What do you think of that,
smart guy?"
And he was like, "What?"
I'm like, "You knew you were
going to the Ramadan Hotel.
"There's no cab driver
that picked this hotel."
He's like, "I don't know
how to write English."
And I'm like, "Oh, crap."
And what I had noticed,
by the way he was answering
the question and this whole
logical story that he had--
to me it smacked of,
this guy has had
some sort of
counter-interrogation training.
Sort of SERE school
that he had been through.
- What's SERE school?
- Survival, escape,
resistance, and evasion.
It's basically
a military training course
that they put--if you
get caught as a POW,
we're going to teach
you how to survive.
You have to tell
a logical story,
and eventually they're
going to figure it out.
They're going to
know you're lying.
But the longer you take for
that lie to be uncovered,
the better it is
for your buddies.
And I'm like, "Let's just
talk about you for a second."
I said, "You don't have to
talk. Let me talk."
And I said, "Look, I've been
here three or four days.
"Look how dirty I am.
Look how clean you are."
And he falls right for it.
He goes, "Well, that's
because everybody knows
Arab men are very clean
and Americans are very dirty."
But I said,
"Look at your belt.
"There's no stretch marks
on it.
That's a new belt."
And he starts fiddling
with the belt.
I say, "Take off that belt!"
And when he takes off the
belt--it was a brand new belt.
And I said,
"Listen, I don't know what kind
"of money you use in Yemen,
"but I know here they
use Kenyan shillings,
so that price tag better
say Yemeni whatever you use."
And of course,
he takes off the belt,
and it's in Kenyan shillings.
So we know he bought
the belt here,
so now we've really
caught him in a lie.
And I find John.
I said, John,
"I need you to
come in just for five minutes.
"Just sit down,
tell me your impression.
What do you think of this guy?"
- I said, "Let me--
let me check it out."
So you have to understand
my background a little bit.
I started to develop a
pretty good intelligence base
on who, what, when,
where, and how
folks went to Afghanistan
to fight.
And we developed sources who
told us more about the psyche
of folks going to
fight in Afghanistan,
and how--and how
important it was to them.
So I'm looking at him,
you know.
I'm looking at his age.
This is 1998.
Uh, I'm saying to myself,
well, you know,
maybe he could be
a former mujahideen.
A lot of the t*rror1st acts
being committed
at that time frame
were done by people
who had previous experience
in the mujahideen.
- The mujahideen,
who have been glorified
as freedom fighters
in the West,
even though some are openly
hostile to the United States.
- So the most
famous personality
within the mujahideen is
a guy named Abdullah Azzam.
He was the guy who rallied
the whole Muslim world
to go leave their places and
go fight with the mujahideen
against the Russians.
- So I asked him, I said,
"Let me ask you a question."
I said, "Do a guy
named Abdullah Azzam?"
He couldn't help himself,
you know?
And he says, "Oh, he
is a wonderful man.
He's in charge of
all the mujahideen."
It's a good clue, you know?
And then I remember, you
know, saying to myself,
really quick--it all
came in a second--
he's the surviving
suicide b*mber.
He's supposed to be dead,
and he has no exit strategy.
And as soon as he got
out of the hospital,
he had to call somebody,
and I knew that would be
an important number.
I put a pencil in his hand,
kind of slapped the desk
a little bit.
I said, "Write down the
first number you called
when you got back
to the hotel."
And he writes it.
- We have officers
assigned to the phone company.
We basically go to them,
and we present the case.
If the case is compelling,
they'll give you
the phone records.
We want to know, in the
last month,
this Yemen phone number--
we'll just call it the 578
number--this 578 number,
tell us everybody from Kenya
that called this 578 number
in Yemen in the last 30 days.
And there's only two places
in the whole country of Kenya
that called the 578
number in Yemen,
one, a phone that's near the
hotel where we arrested him.
And all those calls were made
after the bombing happens.
All right, well,
that's logical.
That's where he was.
He's making those phone calls.
Well, where else called?
There's this other place that
called, this other number,
and it's a series of 10 or
12 phone calls in the days
preceding the bombing.
And I'm looking at it
and I'm like, holy cow.
The last phone call
made from this location
to the 578 number is half an
hour before the b*mb goes off.
And I'm like, holy crap.
We got to find that house.
- Osama bin Laden, you're
going to hear a lot
of talk about him.
- The embassy bombings
was al-Qaeda's first
major attack against the West.
- Terrorism is one of
the greatest dangers
we face in this new global era.
- The b*mb techs
were like, this place
is loaded with TNT powder.
This is where
the b*mb was made.
- We had about 14 photographs
in there of people
we thought were involved.
- This isn't
a needle in a haystack,
this is a needle
in a pile of needles.
And I said, "Oh, this
guy is from Tanzania."
And I can then see the photo.
I'm like, holy cow.
- I said, "We will
not stop until we get
each and every one of you."
- I want to know why all
these people had to die.
Why did these
people have to die?
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