Last 4 Sets of Remains From Cole Recovered

Oct. 20, 2000 -- Rescuers have recovered the final four sets of remains of sailors killed in the bombing of the USS Cole.

Meanwhile, investigators have widened their probe into the blast to Saudi Arabia and a far eastern Yemeni province, Yemeni officials said Thursday.

The remains that were removed from the ship will be flown home soon, Navy officials in Washington said. Thirteen bodies already had been flown the United States.

The recovery of the remains came as FBI director Louis Freeh arrived in Yemen, held talks with President Ali Abdullah Saleh and toured the U.S. warship, which was attacked Oct. 12 as it arrived to refuel.

He told a news conference that it was far too early to speculate who may have sponsored or be responsible for the bombing, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39. “We are looking at this with an open mind,” he said.

He said determining exactly who carried out the attack “will be governed by facts and forensics,” adding that “we are far from making even preliminaryjudgments on this.”

Freeh also repeated several times that the FBI’s presence in Yemen is temporary and that the U.S. force is a “junior partner” to the Yemeni police. Wednesday, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said the FBI was going to set up a permanent presence in Yemen, causing angry rumors throughout the Arab world that Yemen’s president denied Wednesday night.

“The investigation is being run by the Yemeni police and security authorities. We are there as a partner … but we are the junior partner,” Freeh said.

Freeh met with Saleh and with sailors on the Cole, and will leave Yemen later Thursday.

The Investigation

The FBI is focusing on two buildings in its investigation: one, about 20 miles from where the Cole was berthed, where bomb-making equipment was found on Tuesday; another small house is about 12 miles from the Cole.

The apartment where bomb-making equipment was found also yielded documents they believe originated in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadhramaut, Yemeni security officials said Thursday.

A vehicle believed used by the attackers also contained documents traced to Hadhramaut, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

They said investigators were dispatched on Thursday to Hadhramaut, seeking more information to try to identify two men who used the Aden apartment and who have not been seen since the bombing.

At least four men were involved in the attack on the Cole, two of whom were thought to be the suicide bombers Freeh said.

Yemeni officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the possible suspects only as non-Yemeni Arabs.

Hadhramaut, a conservative region along the eastern border with Oman, is home to lawless tribes that have kidnapped foreigners for ransom.

Yemeni officials said another team of investigators was going to neighboring Saudi Arabia Thursday. The officials provided no information on the leads that took them there. Many Yemenis from Hadhramaut have settled in Saudi Arabia.

Investigators also were questioning the owner of a welding shop who had done welding for the suspects, security officials said without elaborating.

The landlord of the Aden apartment and a real estate agent who found the apartment for the two men also have been questioned.

Updates From Yemen’s President

Yemen’s president expressed confidence in a television interview on Wednesday that investigators had found the place where the bomb that was used in the attack was assembled.

“We were able to discover the car that transported the boat, and the launcher that lowered the boat, and we found the workshop that made the engine and the house that the people who carried out the crime were living in,” Saleh told Qatar’s satellite television station al-Jazeera.

“The boat came from [the port of] Hodeidah, the engine camefrom Aden,” Saleh said. “The attack had been planned for a longtime.”

The Yemeni leader also said a 12-year-old Yemeni boy told authorities that a bearded manwearing glasses gave him small change and told him to watch his car after it pulled up to a beach near the port of Aden on Thursday, the day of the bombing.

The man then set off in a rubber boat that had he had carried atop the car. He never returned.

Investigators believe the explosives may have been shaped into the body of the boat.

Responsibility for Choosing Yemen

Senate and Pentagon investigators are starting probes into security arrangements for the USS Cole. Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni took full responsibility for choosing Yemen as a refueling spot.

“I pass that buck on to nobody,” Zinni testified before Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

Zinni is the former commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command and was involved in the decision to pick Yemen as a refueling spot. He says Aden was considered the best option available for refueling Navy ships in the volatile region.

“The threat conditions in Aden, the specific threat conditions, were actually better than we had elsewhere. It was not good certainly. There were threat conditions that existed, but certainly they were no worse than anywhere else,” Zinni testified.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a top-secret hearing Friday, on issues related to the terrorist attack on the Navy destroyer.

Hearings on Security

The Pentagon plans to announce that it is forming a security review panel to look at whether new measures are needed to protect U.S. military forces overseas. The panel looking at the Cole incident will be similar to the panel set up following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

The probe will be led by Adm. Harold W. Gehman, who retired this summer as commander in chief of U.S. Joint Forces Command, and Gen. William Crouch, who retired in 1999 as Army deputy chief of staff, according to The Associated Press.

During the bombing at a U.S. barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on June 25, 1996, 19 U.S. servicemen were killed and 500 Americans and Saudis injured. A subsequent investigation concluded the troops had not been adequately protected, and commanders in the field were given extra direct responsibility for protecting their troops. The bombers were never found.

ABCNEWS’ John McWethy and Barbara Starr in Washington, Morton Dean and Andrew Morse in Aden, ABCNEWS.com’s David Ruppe and The Associated Press contributed to this report.