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Folder Title: Amb. Don Petterson

Document Date: 09-30-2003
Document Type: Note/Notes
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Subject: memorandum for the record and prep material for in

terview with Don Petterson

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RETRIEVAL #: 281 00007 0002 43

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BY DAVID ROSE

© VANITY FAIR
Repinted from Vanity Fair (New York) January 2002, No. 497, pp.50-56

THE OSAMA FILES

An updated picture of Osama bin Laden
with fellow terrorists Ayman al-Zawahiri left,
and Muhammad Atef.
In the wake of those attacks, President Bush and the F.B.I, issued a list of the world's 22 most
wanted terrorists. Sudan has kept files on many of them for years.
BY DAVID ROSE
In a squat, red-brick building next to Khartoum's presidential
palace, the agents who serve the Mukhabarat, Sudan's
intelligence division, keep their secrets in pale manila files.
"Those guys know what they're doing," says a retired long-
time C.I.A. Africa specialist. "They tend to be thorough. Their
stuff is pretty reliable." And sometimes very important.
Sudan's Mukhabarat spent the early to mid-1990s amassing
copious intelligence on Osama bin Laden and his leading
cohorts at the heart of the al-Qaeda terrorist network-when
they were still little known, and their activities were relatively
limited. Some of the files at Mukhabarat headquarters identify
individuals who played central roles in the suicide bombings
of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August
1998; others chart the backgrounds and movements of al-
Qaeda operatives who are said to be linked directly to the
atrocities of September 1 1 .

From the autumn of 1996 until just weeks before the 2001 attacks, the Sudanese government
made numerous efforts to share this information with the United States all of which were
rebuffed. On several occasions, senior agents at the F.B.I, wished to accept these offers, but
were apparently overruled by President Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and hi
assistant secretary fcM^Ajnc^^usgnRice, both of whom would not comment for this story afte
repeated requests for interviews. Vanity Fair has obtained letters and secret memorandums th
document these approaches. They were made directly to the State Department and the F.B.I.,
and also via a series of well-connected U.S. citizens who tried to warn America that the
Sudanese offers were serious and significant.

By definition, September 11 was an intelligence failure. As the C.I.A. man puts It, We didn't kn
it was going to happen." Some of the reasons for that failure were structural, systemic: the
shortage of Arabic-speaking agents, the inability of C.I.A. officers to go underground in
Afghanistan.

This one was more specific. CE Had U.S. agencies examined the AF Mukhabarat files when tl

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