The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack by al-Qaeda against USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy, on 12 October 2000, while she was being refueled in Yemen's Aden harbor.
Seventeen U.S. Navy sailors were killed and thirty-seven injured in the deadliest attack against a United States naval vessel since the USS Stark incident in 1987.
Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. A U.S. judge held Sudan liable for the attack, while another released over $13 million in Sudanese frozen assets to the relatives of those killed. The U.S. Navy reconsidered its rules of engagement in response to this attack. On 30 October 2020, Sudan and the United States signed a bilateral claims agreement to compensate families of the sailors who died in the bombing. The agreement entered into force in February 2021.
Attack
On the morning of Thursday, 12 October 2000, Cole, under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold, docked in Aden harbor for a routine fuel stop. Cole completed mooring at 9:30 and began refueling at 10:30. Around 11:18 local time (08:18 UTC), a small fiberglass boat carrying C4 explosives and two suicide bombers approached the port side of the destroyer and exploded, creating a 40-by-60-foot (12 by 18 m) gash in the ship's port side. Former CIA intelligence officer Robert Finke said the blast appeared to be caused by C4 explosives molded into a shaped charge against the hull of the boat. More than 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of explosive were used. Much of the blast entered a mechanical space below the ship's galley, violently pushing up the deck, thereby killing crew members who were lining up for lunch. The crew fought flooding in the engineering spaces and had the damage under control after three days. Divers inspected the hull and determined that the keel had not been damaged.
The attack was the deadliest against a U.S. naval vessel since an Iraqi aircraft's attack on USS Stark on 17 May 1987. The asymmetric warfare attack was organized and directed by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. In June 2001, an al-Qaeda recruitment video featuring Osama bin Laden boasted about the attack and encouraged similar attacks.
Al-Qaeda had previously attempted a similar attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans while she was in port at Aden on 3 January 2000, as a part of the 2000 millennium attack plots. The plan was to load a boat full of explosives and detonate them near The Sullivans. However, the boat was so overladen that it sank, forcing the attack to be abandoned.
Planning for the October attack was discussed at the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda summit from 5 to 8 January, shortly after the failed attempt. Along with other plotters, the summit was attended by future September 11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who then traveled to San Diego, California. On 10 June 2000, al-Mihdhar left San Diego to visit his wife in Yemen at a house also used as a communications hub for al-Qaeda. After the bombing, Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul Karim al-Iryani reported that al-Mihdhar had been one of the key planners of the attack and had been in the country at the time of the attacks. He later returned to the United States to participate in the 9/11 hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77, which flew into the Pentagon, killing 184 people.
Rescue
The first naval ship on the scene to assist the stricken Cole was HMS Marlborough, a Type 23 frigate of the British Royal Navy, under the command of Captain Anthony Rix. She was on passage to the UK after a six-month deployment in the Persian Gulf. Marlborough had full medical and damage control teams on board, and when her offer of assistance was accepted she immediately diverted to Aden. The sailors injured in the explosion were taken to the United States Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein, Germany, before being sent to the United States. Eleven of the most badly injured sailors were sent via medevac provided by the French Air Force to a French military hospital in Djibouti and underwent surgery before being sent with the rest of the injured seamen to Germany.
The first U.S. military support to arrive was a U.S. Air Force Security Forces Quick Reaction Force from the 363rd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing, based in Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, transported by C-130 aircraft. They were followed by another small group of United States Marines from the Interim Marine Corps Security Force Company, Bahrain, flown in by P-3 Orion aircraft. Both forces landed a few hours after the ship was struck and were reinforced by a U.S Marine platoon with the 1st Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team Company (FAST), based out of Norfolk, Virginia. The Marines from 6th Platoon, 1st FAST arrived on 13 October from Norfolk.
USS Donald Cook and USS Hawes arrive in the vicinity of Aden that afternoon providing repair and logistical support. USNS Catawba, USS Camden, Anchorage, Duluth and Tarawa arrived in Aden some days later, providing watch relief crews, harbor security, damage control equipment, billeting, and food service for the crew of Cole. Landing craft (LCU) from the amphibious assault ships provided daily runs from Tarawa with hot food and supplies, and ferried personnel to and from all other naval vessels supporting Cole. In the remaining days LCU 1632 and various personnel from LCU 1666 teamed up to patrol around Cole.
Investigation
In a form of transport pioneered in 1988 by USS Samuel B. Roberts aboard Mighty Servant 2, Cole was hauled from Aden aboard the Norwegian semi-submersible heavy lift salvage ship MV Blue Marlin. Cole arrived in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 13 December 2000, where she was rebuilt.
FBI and NCIS agents sent to Yemen to investigate the bombing worked in an extremely hostile environment. They were met at the airport by Yemeni special forces with "...each soldier pointing an AK-47." Speakers in the Yemeni parliament "calling for jihad against America" were broadcast on local television each night. After some delay, the Yemenis produced a CCTV video from a harborside security camera, but the crucial moment of the explosion was deleted. At one point, the hotel where the agents stayed "was surrounded with men in traditional dress, some in Jeeps, all carrying guns." Finally the agents abandoned their hotel to stay at a US Navy vessel in the Bay of Aden, but they still did not feel safe. After being granted "permission from the Yemeni government to fly back to shore," an agent said their helicopter took evasive action during the flight due to fears of shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles.
Responsibility
On 14 March 2007, a federal judge in the United States, Robert G. Doumar, ruled that the Sudanese government was liable for the bombing.
The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed against the Sudanese government by relatives of the victims, who claim that al-Qaeda could not have carried out the attacks without the support of Sudanese officials. The judge said:
There is substantial evidence in this case presented by the expert testimony that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan.
On 25 July 2007, Doumar ordered the Sudanese government to pay $8 million to the families of the 17 sailors who died. He calculated the amount they should receive by multiplying the salary of the sailors by the number of years they would have continued to work. The following day, Sudan's Justice Minister Mohammed al-Mard said Sudan intended to appeal the ruling.
By May 2008, all defendants convicted in the attack had escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials. On 30 June 2008, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, legal advisor to the U.S. military tribunal system, announced that charges were being sworn against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian citizen of Yemeni descent, who had been held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006. Pentagon officials said the charges "organizing and directing" the Cole bombing still needed approval by a Department of Defense official who oversees military commissions set up for terrorism suspects. Pentagon officials said they would seek the death penalty.
In March 2015, U.S. federal judge Rudolph Contreras found both Iran and Sudan complicit in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole by al-Qaeda, stating that "Iran was directly involved in establishing Al-Qaeda's Yemen network and supported training and logistics for Al-Qaeda in the Gulf region" through Hezbollah. Two previous federal judges had ruled that Sudan was liable for its role in the attack, but Contreras's "ruling is the first to find Iran partly responsible for the incident."
Alleged mastermind
Several people have been described as the Cole bombing mastermind. A Guantanamo Military Commission said Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, captured in late 2002, was the planner. Al-Nashiri was one of the three "high-value detainees" the George W. Bush administration would acknowledge had been subjected to waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Abu Ali al-Harithi was one of the first suspected terrorists to be targeted by a missile-armed Predator drone. He, too, was described as the mastermind of the Cole bombing.
In 2003, the U.S. Justice Department indicted two people who were believed to have been the last main co-conspirators who were still at large, Jamal Ahmad Mohammad Al Badawi and Fahd al-Quso. Jamal Ahmad Mohammad Al Badawi was convicted in Yemen and sentenced to death. Fahd al-Quso was killed by a U.S. drone strike on 6 May 2012. Al-Badawi, also called a "mastermind" of the Cole bombing, was one of seventeen captives who escaped through a tunnel from a Yemeni jail in 2006. Al-Badawi was killed in a drone strike on 1 January 2019 in the Marib governate, Yemen.
Tawfiq bin Attash, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and is currently being held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, was "considered the mastermind" of the bombing. An al-Qaeda commander in Yemen also confirmed that another co-conspirator in the bombing, Abdul Mun'im Salim al-Fatahani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike on 31 January 2012. On 6 May 2012, officials from the Yemen government reported that al-Quso was killed in an airstrike earlier in the day in southern Yemen. The report was later confirmed by U.S. officials and al-Qaeda's media network As-Sahab.
Aftermath
Rules of engagement
The destroyer's rules of engagement, as approved by the Pentagon, forbade guards to fire upon the small boat (which was not known to be loaded with explosives) without permission from Cole's captain or another officer.
Petty Officer John Washak said that right after the blast, a senior chief petty officer ordered him to turn an M-60 machine gun on Cole's fantail away from a second small boat approaching. "With blood still on my face", he said, he was told: "That's the rules of engagement: no shooting unless we're shot at." He added, "In the military, it's like we're trained to hesitate now. If somebody had seen something wrong and shot, he probably would have been court-martialed." Petty Officer Jennifer Kudrick said that if the sentries had fired on the suicide craft, "we would have gotten in more trouble for shooting two foreigners than losing seventeen American sailors."
Consequences
President Bill Clinton declared, "If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable."
On 19 January 2001, the U.S. Navy completed and released its Judge Advocate General Manual (JAGMAN) investigation of the incident, concluding that Cole's commanding officer Commander Kirk Lippold "acted reasonably in adjusting his force protection posture based on his assessment of the situation that presented itself" when Cole arrived in Aden to refuel. The JAGMAN investigation also concluded that "the commanding officer of Cole did not have the specific intelligence, focused training, appropriate equipment or on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, preplanned assault on his ship", and recommended significant changes in Navy procedures. In spite of this finding, Lippold was subsequently denied promotion and retired at the same rank of commander in 2007.
In Afghanistan the bombing was a "great victory for bin Laden. Al-Qaeda camps filled with new recruits, and contributors from the Gulf States arrived with petrodollars."