The embassy attacks put teeth on these taunts. And two years after bin Laden’s declaration of war by fax, the bombings showed worrisome operational reach and sophistication. For a group hanging its reputation on its violent theater, the simultaneous, deadly attack was a coup—and a name-making moment.
On August 20, 1998, thirteen days after the embassies were bombed, U.S. naval ships in the Arabian Sea unleashed a volley of cruise missiles. Thirteen of them, fired toward Khartoum, hit what American intelligence believed was a factory connected to bin Laden and producing chemical weapons—including nerve gas. The intelligence was later judged to be wrong; the building had in fact produced pharmaceuticals. A Sudanese worker was killed, and to the ire of many, the destruction of the factory deprived thousands of Sudanese of medicine. The true owner of the factory—who was not connected to bin Laden’s murky business holdings, as was once believed—later filed suit against the United States.
The same day, sixty-six Tomahawk cruise missiles sailed toward Al Qaeda training camps in eastern Afghanistan, where the United States thought bin Laden would be; he was instead on the road to Kabul, ninety miles to the north. In the aftermath of the explosions, Al Qaeda observers counted five or six dead Arabs, while the Taliban accused Americans of killing twenty-two Afghans and wounding twice that number. The Clinton administration estimated up to thirty militants were killed.
There were other casualties of the strike, largely unaccounted for at the time. Prior to the strike, U.S. officials feared the Pakistanis would think the U.S. missiles crossing over their country were from India. But they worried more that members of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment would tip off the Taliban or bin Laden about the impending strike. So they gave the Pakistanis notice, but just barely: Over a late-night chicken tikka dinner in Islamabad on the night of August 20, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Ralston told the head of the Pakistani army, General Jehangir Karamat, that in ten minutes, missiles would be entering Pakistani airspace.
Not only were the Pakistanis kept in the dark, but they also lost men. Some of the buildings blown apart by the missiles were in fact used by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), killing, by some accounts, five of its intelligence officers and twenty of its trainees. The event left the Pakistani leadership irate and the Americans ever more skeptical, asking why Pakistani officers were near bin Laden’s camps in the first place.
The relationship continued to degrade. After bin Laden disappeared into the snow-tracked Afghan mountains, the United States increasingly pressured the government of Pakistan to intervene with bin Laden’s hosts—the Taliban, who received significant patronage from Pakistan—to turn him over. These demands were met with indignant replies.
“Quite honestly,” one Pakistani official complained in a New Yorker article printed during the winter I spent at CFR, “what would Pakistan gain by going into Afghanistan and snatching bin Laden for you? We are the most heavily sanctioned United States ally. We helped you capture Ramzi Yousef . . . and all we got were thank-you notes. You lobbed missiles across our territory with no advance warning! You humiliated our government! You killed Pakistani intelligence officers!”
So started, long before we knew how much it would matter, an unhealthy tradition of American administrations, skeptical of Pakistan’s allegiance, demanding that the Pakistanis bring them bin Laden, all the while leaving the Pakistanis feeling less and less like an ally—and feeling less inclined to act that way.
* * *
Sometime that winter, my old friend and mentor John Vines from 3rd Rangers called me and asked whether, if he were fortunate enough to be selected to command the 82nd Airborne Division the following year, I’d be interested in being his assistant division commander for operations. I said yes immediately.
In June 2000, two months before my forty-sixth birthday, I began my third tour as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. I replaced Dave Petraeus as the assistant division command for operations. Vines commanded some sixteen thousand 82nd paratroopers through seven capable brigade commanders and his experienced chief of staff. That left the two ADCs, one each for operations and support, with tremendous freedom and authority but little bureaucratic responsibility. The position gave us time to focus on training, mentoring subordinate leaders, and serving, along with the division’s command sergeant major, as additional eyes and ears for the commander. Being an understudy to Vines was also a great opportunity to learn how to be a general officer.