Free 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary by Robert L. Grenier Page B

service and rendered to Jordan, his country of origin, via a special Jordanian military flight. He had fallen victim to a scenario in which the Pakistanis had both compelling evidence of his complicity in a foreign crime, and such precise information regarding his physical location that they could not have failed to take action without seeming complicit in his activities.
    While this success was gratifying, it had involved a concurrence of events that would be extremely difficult to duplicate on a regular basis. If we were to have any realistic hope of capturing the second, and far more important, of the two Palestinians, we would need active Pakistani support in tracking him down.
    Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, better known as Abu Zubayda, had been on the CIA radar screen for many months. A senior logistician for al-Qa’ida, we knew he had been transiting regularly through Pakistan between Afghanistan and the wider world, facilitating the movement of Arab recruits to and from the training camps located in Taliban-controlled areas. The extent of his importance to al-Qa’ida had just been demonstrated in Jordan. He was the proximate reason why Milam and I were meeting this night with General Musharraf, the chief of Army Staff and, for four months now, Pakistan’s military dictator.
    Entering Army House, the traditional residence of Pakistan’s military chiefs, was like stepping back in time. The architecture, the atmosphere of the place, was redolent of the British Raj. On the surface, the meeting seemed to go well. Musharraf received us cordially and informally. A soft-spoken and unprepossessing man of medium height, he carried himself with a quiet, earnest dignity. Though he may have seized power in a military coup, there was nothing of the bluster or bravado one might have associated with a former commando whose notable military career had been associated rather more with daring than with reflection. Musharraf listened intently to Milam’s presentation. Pronouncing Zubayda’s unfamiliar Arab name with care, the ambassador laid out the case. Here was a very dangerous man, a senior lieutenant of bin Laden’s, who had been implicated by the judicial authorities of Jordan in a major terrorist operation. We knew that he wasfrequently transiting Pakistan, and we needed Pakistani help to apprehend him before he could strike again. All very straightforward. But the key to the ambassador’s pitch was an implied threat, couched as a simple political reality: for if, God forbid, there were another major al-Qa’ida terrorist operation against the United States in which Abu Zubayda were implicated, and if Pakistan were seen to have been unwilling to bring his activities to an end despite the clear opportunity to do so, the implications for U.S.-Pakistan relations would be severe, if not catastrophic.
    Looking at me, Musharraf asked whether information regarding Zubayda had been shared with General Mahmud Ahmed, director-general of the ISI—the infamous organization with which CIA had worked so effectively against the Soviets. I said it had. I pointed out that success against Abu Zubayda would require more of Pakistan than simply to take action based on U.S.-supplied information. We needed active, dynamic cooperation between our two countries, and specifically between our two intelligence services, if we were to generate the real-time, actionable intelligence necessary to find, fix, and apprehend this man. The general replied simply and straightforwardly: He would speak with General Mahmud. The United States could count on Pakistan’s full cooperation against this terrorist threat.
    The meeting ought to have buoyed my confidence, but it did not. I felt Musharraf had been sincere. He would no doubt have taken the action we requested if he had been in a position to do so himself. But he was not. As the four-star chief of Army Staff, he presided as a rough “first among equals” over the Pakistan Army’s nine Corps commanders