Washington Works to Unravel Mystery of Blasts

Black luxury cars carrying top administration officials zoomed in and out of the White House gates Saturday as hundreds of federal employees scoured intelligence reports and loaded Africa-bound aircraft with everything from German shepherds to jackhammers in a coordinated, governmentwide response to the nearly simultaneous bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

The frenetic activity extended from the Situation Room at the White House, where Cabinet officials gathered, to the CIA in suburban Virginia, where analysts brainstormed about who might be responsible.

The Pentagon mapped logistics as the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the U.S. Information Agency, the General Services Administration, the American Red Cross and other agencies pitched in.

At the State Department’s seventh-floor command center, about 30 officials met around the clock over a long conference table. They were busy with seemingly 1,001 tasks: from notifying next of kin to securing light fixtures to illuminate the searches. Officials opened telephone lines to each country and kept them on speakerphones nonstop.

“It doesn’t look much like a Saturday in key corridors of the building,” said a State Department official at the command center. “Lamentably, though, we are much experienced in these kinds of crises.”

For official Washington, responding to an emergency bombing that claims the lives of Americans is akin to a fire drill: The tragedies occur often enough for participants to follow an all-too-familiar routine but seldom enough to cause pain and shock.

On this occasion, as in all the others, there were two immediate priorities. One was supplying the government crews that would pore over every inch of the wreckage in Kenya and Tanzania in search of clues, no matter how minute, that could help convict the bombers in court. First, though, was the task of rescue workers searching the crumbled concrete for signs of life.

The surge of motion belied one discouraging reality for those who had endured such terrorist attacks before: Cracking the case may take months or even years. And sometimes such attacks are never solved.

President Clinton acknowledged as much in his radio address, ticking off a list of past terrorists who have been brought to justice and others who have slipped through the cracks.

“No matter how long it takes or where it takes us, we will pursue terrorists until the cases are solved and justice is done,” the president vowed.

Huddling with National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger in the White House Situation Room were Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, CIA Director George J. Tenet and Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

The president did not attend the 90-minute session, but aides briefed him throughout the day on the response effort and the rising death toll. There were at least 147 deaths, among them 11 Americans in Kenya.

The atmosphere was somber, especially among many national security aides who were acquainted with some of the embassy workers killed in the blasts.

“At meetings, as they read off the list, people are saying, ‘I’ve worked with him,’ or ‘I’ve worked with her,’ ” a White House official said.

At Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, one military aircraft began the 18-hour journey across the Atlantic with 62 suburban Virginia firefighters aboard. The search-and-rescue team brought along concrete-piercing drills, blowtorches, listening devices, fiber-optic cameras, medical supplies and canine teams.

Other planes took off from bases around the world, loaded with doctors, soldiers, FBI agents, public affairs officers and other government personnel.

There was more than 150,000 pounds of equipment and medical supplies either on the ground in the two countries or en route, officials said.

The rush to Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was not without glitches. It took Air Force officials 12 hours to get one plane from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to Andrews. Pentagon officials blamed the delay on the need to get clearances from each country covered by the flight plan as well as logistics such as airborne refueling.

All the flights going in and out of Africa also kept bureaucrats busy.

“We have at least 14 separate military transport flights either on the way or on the ground,” the State Department aide said. “Each one needs onetime permission to fly over about 20 countries. That means at least 20 phone calls and 20 pieces of paper.”

In one of his several telephone conversations with world leaders, Clinton thanked French President Jacques Chirac for assistance from an extensive network of French embassies in Africa. The 25-minute call also covered another foreign policy hot spot: the increasingly violent situation in the breakaway province of Kosovo, where Serbian forces have overrun the former ethnic Albanian rebel headquarters.

In the back of everybody’s mind, no matter what task they had been assigned, was the question of who was responsible.

Solving that mystery will be a painstaking task that will play out far from Washington, long after the government returns to a more normal mode.

In the weeks ahead, intelligence officials will pore over electronic intercepts and other data for any hint of what might have been intended as a warning. Complementing their work will be investigators combing the two locations.

“The real work is picking everything up at the sites,” said security consultant Larry Johnson, who has worked for the CIA and State Department.