Eavesdropping Senior Quotes

We knew that some guys that looked as though they were al-Qaeda-associated were traveling to KL,” said a senior CIA official, referring to Kuala Lumpur. “We didn’t know what they were going to do there. We were trying to find that. And we were concerned that there might be an attack, because it wasn’t just Mihdhar and Hazmi, it was also ‘eleven young guys’—which was a term that was used for operatives traveling. We didn’t have the names of the others, and on Hazmi we only had his first name, ‘Nawaf.’ So the concern was: What are they doing? Is this a prelude to an attack in KL—what’s happening here?

He spoke to old friends in other departments, and listened to the "porcelain gossip" in the senior-officer toilets.