Ex-Officer Defends Decision to Use Aden as U.S. Navy Refueling Port

The U.S. Navy on Thursday recovered the last four bodies of American sailors from the disabled destroyer Cole, as the retired military commander who had approved the policy of refueling ships in Yemen told a Senate panel that the danger level, while high, was “actually better than we had elsewhere” in the region.

One week after a small boat apparently piloted by suicide bombers blasted a hole in the ship’s side at the port here, killing 17 crew members, Navy officials announced that recovery workers with hydraulic equipment had removed the last four bodies from a mass of crushed metal and tangled wire in the ship’s interior.

The remains are to be flown soon to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the military maintains a mortuary. A plane transporting the bodies of eight victims removed earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at the base today. Five bodies recovered immediately after the Oct. 12 bombing have already been sent to the United States.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni described Yemen as a nation with a weak government and a coast that leaked terrorists like “a sieve.”

The way terrorists were using the country as a haven and transit point into Saudi Arabia made it a security “soft spot” on the Arabian Peninsula, he said.

But Zinni, who retired in June as head of the military’s regional command in the Middle East, said Aden offered the safest and most practical refueling stop the Navy had in the region. It was preferable, he said, to facilities in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti, which the Navy abandoned as a refueling stop in 1997 because of perceived risks.

He said Aden was one of the few ports in the area where U.S. intelligence had not detected specific threats to American interests. U.S. officials previously have said that 25 Navy ships have refueled in Aden without incident over the last 18 months.

Zinni told the committee that he personally examined the security of the port in a series of visits to Aden between May 1998 and May of this year. Each time, Zinni said, it was clear to him that the Yemeni government was sincere in wanting American help in controlling its coastline and fighting terrorism.

And he said he considered it desirable for the United States to have a presence at the southern end of the Red Sea, which is an important “strategic choke point.”

Zinni said there are good reasons why the United States should strengthen its ties with Yemen, despite the problems and dangers the nation presents.

“In the Central Command region, there are rats’ nests or havens for terrorists: Afghanistan with the Taliban, Sudan, Somalia,” he said. “We don’t need Yemen to become another one. We need to provide every incentive to make sure they don’t.”

He denied, however, that the military overlooked security problems because it wanted to improve relations with the government of Yemen.

“I don’t want anyone to think we ever in any instance . . . took a risk for the purpose of a better relationship with a country and put a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine at risk for that reason,” he said.

Zinni came under sharp questioning from senators, especially Republicans, on the risks of Navy stops in Aden, on the adequacy of security preparations and on whether declining U.S. military readiness had played a role in the tragedy.

Chairman Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) told Zinni, “The one question I keep hearing from the families of the crew of the USS Cole is, ‘Why Yemen?’ ”

But when the questioning began to focus on the specifics of security, Zinni insisted on deferring that discussion until a later, closed committee session.

Meanwhile, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh arrived in Aden and sought to portray the large U.S. investigative team as a deferential “junior partner” to Yemeni authorities in the search for perpetrators.

His words apparently were an effort to avoid fostering any impression in the Arab world that the American team--now consisting of Navy ships, dozens of investigators and more than 2,000 Marines--is dominating the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“The FBI presence here is a very temporary one, and it is one under complete direction of the local authorities who are in charge of the case,” Freeh said after a visit to the Cole. “We do not take any action or any steps without their knowledge, without their permission.”

In an interview with CNN, Saleh said the suspects in the case are “elements of Al Jihad returning from Afghanistan.” But his words were ambiguous, since “Al Jihad” can be interpreted as referring specifically to an Egyptian-based group tied to Saudi militant Osama bin Laden or, more broadly, to Islamic fundamentalist veterans of the Afghan war.

One senior U.S. government official, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said more progress has been made in the Cole investigation to date than at a similar point after the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. “We are significantly ahead right now than where we were in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,” the official said, referring to the East African capitals where the attacks occurred.

Senior U.S. government officials said investigators are concentrating on Aden but will probably spread to areas where Muslim militants are known to operate.

U.S. officials discounted some recent reports in the Yemeni media about the investigation, saying they had seen no evidence that other boats in the harbor drew away from the Cole before the blast, suggesting advance notice of the attack. They also could not confirm reports that Yemeni authorities had found a second dwelling that might have been used by the attackers.

The Pentagon on Thursday named two retired officers to co-chair an independent investigation into the bombing, with emphasis on improving security. They are retired Army Gen. William W. Crouch, whose last job was Army vice chief of staff, and retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., former commander of Joint Forces Command at the Cole’s home port of Norfolk, Va.

News reports from Yemen have suggested that the suspects had links to a large region along the Gulf of Aden known as the Hadhramaut.

Associated Press quoted Yemeni officials as saying that documents found in a house and car originated in the region and that investigators had been sent to the Hadhramaut.

“It is no secret that Osama bin Laden is from the Hadhramaut,” said a senior U.S. official in Yemen, who asked not to be identified.

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Richter reported from Washington and Kelly from Aden. Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau in Washington contributed to this report.