The attack
HOW COULD two men in a small boat wreak
so much damage on a $1 billion guided-missile destroyer equipped
with all the latest defensive systems? Seventeen sailors died in the
blast and the US Navy’s latest estimate of the cost of repairs is
$240 million - $70 million more than at first thought. That is a
quarter of the original construction cost, and it is conceivable
that the ship may eventually be written off.
The attack appears to have succeeded
through a mis-match of technologies. American warships are well
protected against the most sophisticated weapons that other
countries might hurl against them, but they are far less well
protected against a more basic kind of attack from an unexpected
quarter.
The USS Cole left Norfolk Naval
Station in the United States on August 8, 2000, for a five-month
deployment which was to have included a port visit in Bahrain.
It passed through the Suez Canal and
the Red Sea before arriving in Aden to refuel on October 12.
According to Admiral Vern Clark, chief of Naval Operations,
refuelling arrangements had been made 10 to 12 days earlier through
the US embassy in Yemen - a standard procedure.
In Aden harbour, the ship did not dock at the quayside:
refuelling takes place at a water-borne platform known as a dolphin.
According to a US military source, the dolphin used by USS Cole is
commercially-run and lies about 600 metres offshore, west of the
historic Prince of Wales pier and about 100 metres east of CalTex
island. The fuel contractor is Arab Investment and Trading, which is
owned by a millionaire Yemeni living in London but also has heavy
Saudi investment.
The mooring operation was completed
at 9.30 a.m. and, according to the US Navy, the ship began taking on
fuel at 10:30 a.m. The ship’s records show that the explosion
occurred at 11:18 a.m. - 47 minutes into the refuelling process,
which takes four or five hours to complete.
There are some discrepancies in
American accounts of the event, in particular timings. The US Navy
initially said the explosion occurred at 12:15 p.m., while the ship
was mooring. In this early version, the bombers’ boat was said to
have aroused no suspicion because it seemed to be involved in the
mooring operation, in which small boats are used to secure lines to
the dolphin.
There may be a simple reason for
these discrepancies. Naval sources suggest that since the explosion
cut off the ship’s power and disabled its communications, the
initial information reached the US second-hand and may have become
garbled. However, a week elapsed before the navy issued its
"corrected" version.
An important question for the US
Navy is why lookouts on the USS Cole took no action to warn off the
explosives-laden inflatable as it approached their ship. Depending
on the precise rules of engagement, this may become a disciplinary
matter, but it is worth noting that the early (now
"corrected") version of events included a plausible excuse
for the lack of action by the ship’s crew - i.e. the attackers’
boat was mistaken for a harbour craft assisting with the mooring.
Early reports also mentioned that the two bombers stood to attention
on their boat and saluted the USS Cole immediately before the
explosion.
It later emerged that the guards on
board USS Cole had instructions not to open fire unless fired upon,
and that the weapons they carried were not loaded (AP, 14 November).
Further internal investigations by the US Navy (AP, Reuters, ABC, 9
December) suggest that the crew - contrary to instructions - had
failed to implement several basic precautions designed to protect
the ship during refuelling:
-
There was no co-ordinated effort
to track the movement of small boats in the harbour;
-
Fire hoses were not "at the
ready" to drive away any small craft that came too close;
-
The Cole's own small boat, which
should have been used to investigate the approach of any
suspicious craft, was not ready for launching.
Why these simple, obvious
precautions were overlooked remains a mystery - especially in the
light of previous threats and attempts to attack American interests
in Yemen.
THE CLAIM that the ship was attacked
during the mooring process also gave rise to suspicions that the
bombers must have had inside information about its impending
arrival. But if the revised timings are correct, at least two hours
would have elapsed between the USS Cole’s entry into the harbour
and the moment of the attack.
If the bombers had already prepared
the inflatable with its explosives and stored it somewhere in Aden,
that should have been ample time to transport it to the sea, launch
it and carry out the attack.
If more time were needed, then
accomplices could easily have spotted the ship’s approach through
the Suez Canal or at various points in the Red Sea. But there was
probably no need even for that. Between three and six US naval ships
were refuelling in Aden each month, so once the explosives were
prepared it would only be a matter of waiting a few days for a
target.
Aden’s natural harbour is large
and the port facilities occupy only a small part of it. There are
numerous places around the city from which shipping movements could
be easily observed. Nor would there be any need for the bombers to
sneak through port security: they could simply launch their craft
elsewhere along the bay, outside the port area.
Yemen's initial reaction was that
the explosion was probably not a bomb. The state-run television said
that President Ali Abdullah Salih had spoken by telephone to US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and had "clarified to
Albright that present information indicates that it was not a
deliberate act."
Some Yemeni witnesses claimed there
had been a fire on the warship before it exploded, and there were
suggestions that it might have been caused by an accident during
refuelling.
However, the Yemeni authorities
moved swiftly to demonstrate their concern and an angry-looking
President Salih was shown on television visiting the injured in
hospital.
Once the Americans announced that
the damage indicated an explosion from outside the warship, not from
inside, the Yemeni authorities quickly accepted that it was a bomb.
LESS THAN 24 hours after the attack
on the USS Cole, a bomb hit the British Embassy in the capital, Sana’a.
The blast, which occurred just after 6 am on October 13, appeared to
have been timed to minimise casualties - and in fact there were
none.
The bomb, apparently thrown over a
wall on the least-protected side of the embassy compound, maximised
damage by hitting an outdoor fuel tank supplying an emergency
generator. The fuel tank was not visible from the street and the
bombers had either struck lucky or had done some homework
beforehand.
Windows of the Chancery building -
which includes the ambassador’s office - were smashed and an outer
wall was blackened by smoke. Officials would not comment on the
internal damage, beyond describing it as "considerable".
Windows of an adjacent school were also broken.
A few weeks after the attack, the British Foreign Office
said it did not know if there was any connection with the Aden
bombing.
Scotland Yard officers were still investigating, an official said. Some Yemenis
continued to maintain (wrongly) that it was not a bomb at all, but an
accident with the generator.
On December 12, in an
interview with the Emirates newspaper, al-Bayan, Yemen's interior
minister, Hussein Mohammed Arab, said one person was in custody in
conncetion with the embassy bombing. "He belongs to the same
elements [involved in the Cole attack] and I believe that the two
cases ... are linked because those who carried them out are the same
members of the fundamentalist trend."
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