The Watchers Read Online Free PDF Page B

regarded as part of the background noise in war-torn Beirut. The military chain of command was regularly briefed about the widening threat to the Marines. But then, in Beirut, people were always making threats. The Pentagon never allowed the Marines to take more defensive positions and had essentially turned them into sitting ducks.
    Underneath the constant warnings lay a discernible sequence of events that led to the assault at the airport. After the embassy attack in the spring, FBI forensic investigators discovered that the bombers had laden their explosives with ordinary pressurized gas bottles, which magnified the force of the blast. Oxygen, propane, and similar gas canisters were simple to obtain almost anywhere in the world, the FBI noted in its final report. The fact that terrorists had not only set their sights on U.S. targets but were enhancing conventional explosives with everyday materials was never made known to the military commanders in Beirut. That’s because the FBI never disseminated its report; it stayed locked within the CIA and the State Department.
    The most fateful signal came in late September. The National Security Agency, which intercepted radio and satellite communications around the globe, snatched a message from the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security to the Iranian ambassador in Syria. The ministry ordered the ambassador to get in touch with a man named Hussein Musawi, the head of an Islamic terrorist group called Amal. Musawi was to turn his sights on the multinational forces in Lebanon and was ordered to mount a “spectacular action against the United States Marines.”
    The Beirut airport was the only place to launch such a spectacular attack. The NSA intercept was the clearest indication yet that the Marines sat in the crosshairs. But owing to the cumbersome military chain of command and an inexplicable failure to grasp the “spectacular” urgency, the message wasn’t delivered to senior military officials until two days after the bombing. Only then did the chief of naval intelligence notify his superiors in the Pentagon that the NSA was sitting on what one official later called a “twenty-four-karat gold document.” A bona fide warning, unnoticed. The missed signal foreshadowed another overlooked phone call placed on September 10, 2001. It warned, in Arabic, that “tomorrow is zero hour,” and it wasn’t translated by the NSA until September 12.
    If there was a national security system at work in Beirut or in Washington, it hadn’t shown itself. The government had no way of capturing information and making it available to those who could discern its importance. The NSC staff was the closest thing to an information traffic cop, and Poindexter and his colleagues struggled to control and understand the data swirling around them. But time and again a recalcitrant bureaucracy foiled their best efforts. The Pentagon refused to let the NSC staff have direct access to generals and field commanders. The State Department jealously guarded access to ambassadors and embassies. And the intelligence community was caught up in its own internecine battles.
    Someone had to wrest control, Poindexter thought.
    As dawn approached, he reached McFarlane on a secure phone kept in the president’s golf cart. He’d briefed Reagan, who absorbed the news quietly, sitting in his pajamas and silk bathrobe. Most of the Marines had been asleep in the BLT when it was hit. Reagan understood that the loss of life would reach catastrophic levels, and that identifying the dead would be difficult if any of them had removed their dog tags before bunking down for the night.
    â€œWhat does he want to do?” Poindexter asked.
    â€œHit them back,” McFarlane replied.
    Reagan and his traveling team prepared to head back to the White House, where the press would soon be gathering. Poindexter got up from his desk; it was time to go in. There would be an all-hands