Former FBI supervisory agent: U.S. ambassador to Yemen in 2000 hindered FBI investigation into USS Cole bombing

Via JihadWatch:

A naive and muddleheaded multiculturalist ambassador impedes anti-terror efforts. "Coddling Terrorists In Yemen," by Ali H. Soufan, an FBI supervisory special agent from 1997 to May 2005, in the Washington Post:

Seven years after al-Qaeda terrorists Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Quso confessed to me their crucial involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole, and three years after they were convicted in a Yemeni court -- where a judge imposed a death sentence on Badawi -- they, along with many other al-Qaeda terrorists, are free. On Oct. 12, 2000, when I flew to Yemen to lead the FBI's Cole investigation, I had no idea how uncooperative the Yemeni government would initially be. Nor could I have imagined how disconnected from reality the U.S. ambassador to Yemen then, Barbara K. Bodine, would prove.

I have hesitated in the past to share my view of the conflict between Bodine and the FBI's counterterrorism leader, John O'Neill. I feel compelled, however, to respond to Bodine's recent comments, which slander the efforts of many dedicated counterterrorism agents and divert attention from the significant terrorist problem within Yemen, our "ally" in the "war on terror."

A recent Post report on Yemen allowing al-Qaeda operatives to go free offered insight into the challenges the FBI faced. Bodine was quoted in the article not urging the Yemeni government to rearrest the terrorists but, instead, denigrating the agents who investigated the attack. She faulted the FBI as being slow to trust Yemeni authorities and said agents were "dealing with a bureaucracy and a culture they didn't understand. . . . We had one group working on a New York minute, and another on a 4,000-year-old history."

In fact, our team included several Arab American agents who understood the culture and the region. Even so, such comments were irrelevant. The FBI left Yemen with the terrorists in jail.

It is true that while tracking the terrorists we worked "on a New York minute." We owed that much to the sailors murdered on the Cole and to all innocent people who remained targets as long as the terrorists were free.

It is also true that we did not trust some Yemeni officials. We had good reason not to:

When the FBI arrived in Yemen, some government officials tried to convince us that the explosion had been caused by a malfunction in the Cole's operating systems. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh even asked the U.S. government for money to clean up port damage the United States "caused."...

Read it all.

Bomb at Ancient Yemeni Temple Kills 8

A Muslim suicide car bomber blew himself up Monday at the site of an ancient temple popular with tourists, killing eight people and wounding seven, police said. Police in the province of Mareb said six of the dead were tourists, believed to be mostly from Spain. The other two were Yemenis, police said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Witnesses said a car drive through a gate then exploded at the site of temple, which was built about 3,000 years ago at the time of the ancient Queen of Sheba.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the unnamed queen of the land of Sheba heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and journeyed there with gifts of spices, gold, precious stones and beautiful wood to test him with questions, as recorded in First Kings 10:1-13 (largely copied in 2 Chronicles 9:1-12). The queen was awed by Solomon's wisdom and wealth, and pronounced a blessing on Solomon's God. Solomon reciprocated with gifts and "everything she desired," whereupon the queen returned to her country. The queen was apparently quite rich herself, as she brought 4.5 tons of gold with her to give to Solomon (1 Kings 10:10).

More on the Queen of Sheba here at Answers.com.

Yemeni Jews face growing sectarian troubles

From Yemeni Jews Face Growing Sectarian Troubles:

In January, Yahya Yousef Mousa, one of the several hundred Jews still living in Yemen, was confronted by masked gunmen from a Shiite sect who told him and his neighbors to leave their homes in the northern province of Saada or lose their lives. Now, Mousa and eight Jewish families from the village of Salem are living in a secure residential compound in the capital, Sanaa. Their expenses are being paid by the Yemeni government, currently battling an armed rebellion by the same Shiite group that threatened the Jews.