Ronald Kessler - The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack

F BI S PECIAL A GENT Arthur M. (Art) Cummings jumped into his Chrysler 300 with tinted windows and turned on the flashing blue and red lights. Pulling out of the parking garage under the Washington Field Office, he raced through the downtown traffic out to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in McLean, Virginia.

It was August 3, 2006, and Willie T. Hulon, who heads the FBIs National Security Branch, had just told Cummings that British authorities were poised to take down a plot to explode nine American airliners in flight from London.

Since December 2005, the FBI, CIA, and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) had been monitoring the plot. The CIA had been helping the British Security Service, known as MI5, with analysis. At first the agencies thought the British jihadists were planning an attack inside Great Britain. But on August 3, British wiretaps picked up the plotters checking on airline schedules to the United States. Hulon placed Cummings in charge of the FBIs response.

Now the question was when to arrest the twenty-four plotters. If Scotland Yard and the British MI5 waited too long, some of the terrorists could proceed with their plans and kill thousands. If they moved on the terrorists too soon, the agencies risked not learning enough about who else might be involved and might be planning other attacks.

That quandary was at the heart of what Cummings did every day. It was a question that kept him awake at night, one that made other agents literally sick. One of Cummingss bosses told him flatly: If theres another attack, its your ass.

Cummings knew that was true in more ways than one. Al Qaeda was intent on acquiring devices that could kill millions of Americans and usher in another dark age.

You make a mistake, there are dead people, Cummings would say.

An agent since 1987, Cummings had worked nearly every kind of FBI casecounterintelligence, violent crimes, drugs, child molestation before focusing on terrorism. Cummings, forty-eight, was born in Washington, D.C., where his father was working with the Department of Agriculture. Later his father was assigned to Pakistan and Brazil, where Cummings lived as a kid. Once fluent in Portuguese, he now cant recall a single word. After graduating from Bowie High School in Maryland, Cummings joined the Navy SEALs, then attended the University of California. After college, he applied to the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI. Both offered him jobs, but the FBI offered more money.

The risk of being a federal agent would not bother him. In a way, he was used to taking risks. All through college and the Navy, Cummings had two motorcycles, a BMW 650 and a Honda 900. When he married his wife, Ellen, in 1982, she made him promise not to ride motorcycles, and he sold them. In the Navy and in the FBI, Cummings had made 160 parachute jumps from airplanes. When he decided to go skydiving for fun, she said, Im just going to require one thing: Why dont you sit down and write a good-bye letter to each of your kids, just in case? That was the end of his skydiving.

Cummings was running a counterterrorism squad in the FBIs Richmond Field Office when 9/11 happened. That afternoon, Dale L. Watson, who was in charge of the FBIs national counterterrorism effort, called Cummings frantically. He considered Cummings a sharp operator who was not afraid to tell his bosses exactly what he thought. Watson needed him in Washington. He gave him until midnight to get there.

Cummings arrived at 11:30 P.M. Working fourteen-hour days, he wound up living in a Marriott Hotel at Ninth and F Streets NW for three months. After that, Cummings stayed in Washington, shuttling back and forth between headquarters, the Washington Field Office, and the NCTC in McLean, and going home to his wife in Richmond on the weekends. Cummings also did a stint at Guantnamo Bay where he interrogated prisoners.

Now, as a deputy assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division, Cummings was in charge of all international counterterrorism operations. When Joe Billy Jr., the chief of counterterrorism, was away, Cummings was the number one FBI official in charge of counterterrorism. So today, as the British plot reached a boiling point, Cummings had gotten the call to come to the NCTC and take charge of the FBIs response. That involved finding out if the plotters had accomplices who were planning a direct attack on the United States.

Cummings finally slowed his car down and turned off the flashing lights as he approached the winding drive to the NCTC. The restricted U.S. government installation, a six-story building, gleamed white in the summer sun. A nearby building with highly reflective glass looks more forbidding, but this one is the real thing and you can almost see into its windows. From overhead, the NCTC building looks like an x, as in x marks the spot, they like to say.

A member of the United States Policeactually the CIAs security forcecame out of the guard house to check Cummingss FBI credentials, as the officers walkie-talkie crackled with ten-fours. Cummings parked his FBI car, leaving his .40 caliber Glock in the glove compartment.

Heading toward the NCTC entrance in the back of the building, he passed through a paved terrace that serves as informal meeting ground. Few people take the time to sit on the benches and enjoy the massed begonias in bloom and the dark blush of the crape myrtles. In the center of the terrace is a flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes. When he reached the lobby, he crossed two large welcome mats bearing the words