On the front lines of terrorism: An interview with Thomas Locke (Part Two)

Locke

After 32 years battling terrorists with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), retired agent Thomas Locke knows more about the past, present and future threats the United States confronts in the global war on terror then most.

Now serving as the managing director if BGR Government Affairs – a bipartisan lobbying firm – Locke sat down to talk exclusively with GSN: Government Security News about the evolution of terrorism in the 20th century and how America can defeat the threat in the 21st.

In part two of our interview series, Locke discussed the tragic events of September 11, 2001 (read part one here).

“I remember the day like it was yesterday,” said Locke, who upon leaving the FBI office in New York, went on to work as federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and later in the FBI’s offices in Knoxville, Memphis and Washington, DC.

“I was at FBI headquarters,” he continued. “And when I saw the second plane hit on television and I said, ‘everyone to your command posts.’ The place holds about 400 people. But we had three times that. Everyone wanted to be involved, everyone wanted to pitch in and do their part.”

But the collapsing towers, and the planes that were flow into them, was just the beginning of what was becoming a nightmare for scenario for Locke and his team.

“Then the Pentagon gets hit and we are told there is a fourth plane 10 minutes out of DC. We didn’t know where it was going but we know we would make a great target. We had a real fear that they were going to be hit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. I’m thinking, I’m the FBI and I’ve been investigating these guys for years and they were pissed off at us.

“Could they come to 10^th and Pennsylvania? Yes,” he said.

Locke was selected to be the agent in charge of the FBI’s initial investigation and for the next 30 days thereafter he designed, staffed and directed the investigation into the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

“The first thing we had to think about was the 2,400 planes in the air over America,” said Locke. “We immediately told the FAA, who was there with us, to put every plane on ground and the word went out. Only 12 planes didn’t come down, for a variety of reasons, so we sent the fighter jets up. It’s a miracle how fast those planes come down when those fighters go up.”

“I remember stepping outside later that day and looking up at sky,” Locke remarked. “You never notice the planes overhead. But you certainly notice their absence.”

Grounding all air traffic -- an impossible undertaking -- was just small part of the monumental moment in history into which Locke as his team were suddenly thrust on that September morning.

“Then, in the next breath we were told there is a U-haul truck on the way to the State Department,” Locke tells GSN. “So I’m asking how many U-hauls are unaccounted for? There were thousands. People steal them, abandoned them, forget to return them. So word goes out to Metro Police Department and every agency that is working with us.

“Its just one threat after another,” he recalled. “The threats are were just coming at so quickly, all we could do was react.”

Having no choice but to manage an unimaginable, Locke and his team at the FBI knew they also had a case on their hands and they had to answer the question on everyone’s mind: who was behind the attacks? Locke – who, upon first hearing the initial reports earlier that morning about a small place hitting the towers, thought an unfortunate accident had occurred – began forming pretty good idea of the perpetrators were.

“They told me, ‘take who you want’ and I grabbed my most trusted people,” Locke said. “And within 36 hours we knew it was Al Qaeda. This information came from several people.

“Analysts and agents who were pursuing leads starting talking names and running searches,” he continued, “and we got together and Al Qaeda was what we got. It just kept coming back to Al Qaeda.

“From the start I had told everyone that the answer was probably in our files, and it was,” Locke said. “We had better intelligence and we knew more about Al Qaeda then we do about, for instance, what’s going on with the terrorist groups in Pakistan right now.”

President George Bush came to the command post to meet with Locke and his agents. The commander-in-chief, who was scheduled to stay for an hour and a half, remained at the command post, for close to four hours, listening to and interacting with the hardworking men and woman who represented the entire spectrum of government agencies. Locke was grateful to the President for his efforts.

“President Bush did rally the country,” Locke told GSN.  “He drew a line in the sand. He said you’re for us or against us. And do you know what happened? For the first time in FBI history we were allowed to go into countries we were never allowed to before.

“We began solving cases that went as far back as the 1980s, and we were arresting people from all over the Middle East on cases,” he added.

“It was his firm stance – ‘you will do this,’ he said – that allowed us to do what we did. The FBI was never critical of the President because he allowed us do what we do best.

“I was never more proud of the bureau at the time,” Locke admits. “We were asking people to do the impossible and they did.”

It has been ten years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the threat of terrorism still looms large over the United States. But with the passing time, Locke see Americans becoming desensitized, and the heroic unity the nation displayed the day following the attacks, is now just a passing thought.

“People forget,” Locke said. “Memory fades. There was a time when people weren’t complaining about the long lines at airports. But it’s not 9/12. We aren’t wearing our American flags pins anymore.”

Read part three of the Locke interview series in Wednesday’s Insider, in which Locke discusses terrorism today and where the threat will come from tomorrow.