A Hole at the Water Line
As is so often the case right before disaster strikes, everything seemed just fine. Half the crew aboard the destroyer USS Cole was getting the ship ready to dock to take on fuel. In the modest Yemeni port of Aden, a half-dozen small boats puttered around the 505-foot-long warship, hauling its huge mooring lines to anchored buoys. In the glare of the broiling noon sun, armed Navy lookouts patrolled the Cole's deck. But there was no sign of trouble. Their sidearms remained holstered.
Almost unnoticed, one of the small boats motored around the Cole's bow. As it sidled up to the massive hull on the port side, the boat's two occupants suddenly dropped the lines they were tending and stood up. Seconds later, the boat erupted in a ferocious explosion. When the smoke cleared, there was a 40-foot hole in the Cole's steel hull. Inside was worse. One of the ship's mess halls had been blasted into the deck above it. Between the collapsed floors, a dozen sailors lay dead or dying. Five others perished almost immediately. Nearly 40 more suffered injuries, including amputations and third-degree burns.
Bin Laden, again? These were no amateurs who blew up the Cole. A group called the Islamic Army of Aden claimed responsibility, but intelligence officials said there was no leading suspect. Almost certainly, whoever was responsible had advance knowledge that the Cole, an Aegis guided-missile destroyer, one of the Navy's most modern ships, planned to stop in Aden. Either Yemeni officials or the contractor that handled the docking could have leaked word. Apparently, the terrorists figured out how to infiltrate the contractor's operation, run the harbor boats, and sneak a huge amount of explosives on board one of them. "It was well thought out and ingeniously planned," says a Pentagon official. The preparation seems to have been so thorough that U.S. officials doubt the attack was thrown together to coincide with recent Arab-Israeli violence.
A much thornier question is who masterminded it. Following the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States quickly implicated Saudi exile Osama bin Laden after nabbing a suspect who was one of his operatives. But that might not be so easy this time. The direct perpetrators died in what appears to have been a suicide mission. And the 1998 retaliatory attacks on several of bin Laden's facilities ought to make whoever is responsible for the Cole bombing more careful about leaving clues. U.S. officials hope that a Yemeni videotape of harbor operations at the time of the blast will yield some leads. A team of some 60 American investigators, due in Yemen this week, will scour the ship for explosive residue and other clues that could help determine who was responsible.
Investigators will focus on several other matters, too. One is whether the Cole's skipper, Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, should be held responsible for the disaster. Officials at the Pentagon have broadly defended Lippold, saying his crew had fully trained for a terrorist act and had taken the proper precautions in what was considered a nonhostile environment. While a skipper is ultimately responsible for what happens to his ship, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and Navy officials at regional headquarters in Bahrain were responsible for making sure the Aden harbor was safe.
These and other questions may lead to a broader inquiry. One key question: Should a U.S. Navy ship have been in Yemen in the first place? Despite warming ties with Washington, Yemen is still viewed by the State Department as a haven for terrorists. But that didn't stop the Pentagon from cutting a deal with Yemen 15 months ago to conduct refuelings in the Aden harbor. "When Aden opened up," says one Navy officer who was in the region at the time, "we were all on pins and needles." But Navy ships have refueled there about a dozen times since last year. Such partnerships are part of the Clinton administration's "engagement" policy, which includes military ties with dozens of countries that are something less than thriving democracies. "The question is, why are we doing port calls in places like this?" wonders another defense official who has traveled throughout the region. As with other matters in the Middle East, the answers may be about as evanescent as the region's shifting sands.
Anatomy of an attack
A small boat packed with explosives blew a hole in the USS Cole on October 12. The blast ripped through an engine room and an auxiliary machine room.
The USS Cole
Guided-missile destroyer
Commissioned: June 8, 1996
Length: 505 feet
Crew capacity: 325
Armament: Tomahawk missiles, antiaircraft and antiship missiles, aegis air-defense system, Phalanx close-in weapon system for self-defense.
[Graphic labels:]
Missile launch tubes; Engine room; Auxiliary machine room; Missile launch tubes
Sources: U.S. Navy; Federation of American Scientists
This story appears in the October 23, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.