A small boat pulls alongside the USS Cole; the blast kills 17 sailors in line for lunch
The USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer out of Norfolk, Virginia, had stopped in Aden, Yemen, for a routine refueling on October 12, 2000. Around 11:18 local time, two al-Qaeda suicide bombers steered a small boat loaded with over 1,000 pounds of C4 alongside the ship's port side and detonated it. The blast tore a 40-by-60-foot gash in the hull, killing 17 crew members, many of them lining up for lunch near the galley, and wounding 37 more. Commander Kirk Lippold's crew battled flooding for three days to keep the ship afloat.
The Cole bombing was the deadliest attack on a U.S. naval vessel since the USS Stark in 1987, and it demonstrated al-Qaeda's willingness to attack American military assets directly. The attack forced the Navy to rewrite force-protection rules for ships in foreign ports, and years later, federal courts held Sudan and Iran liable, rulings that became a template for later lawsuits against state sponsors of terrorism.
QWhy was the USS Cole named after a Marine who never served in the Navy?
The USS Cole was named for Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, who was killed on Iwo Jima during World War II. The Navy named Arleigh Burke-class destroyers after decorated combat veterans, and Cole's Medal of Honor citation for close-quarters fighting on Iwo Jima was typical of the honorees. Cole was home-ported at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, part of a class of guided missile destroyers built for both offensive strike and fleet defense. The contrast was striking: a ship memorializing a Marine killed in brutal ground combat became, in Aden, the victim of a different kind of close-quarters attack, one delivered not by riflemen storming a beach but by a small boat and a shaped charge.
QWhat obstacles did American investigators face once they reached the bomb site in Yemen?
FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents sent to Aden to investigate the bombing found themselves operating in hostile territory even as they worked the crime scene. Armed Yemeni special forces monitored their movements, and local opposition complicated evidence-gathering and witness access. Yemeni special forces monitored the agents throughout the investigation. Reward money of up to $5 million was offered by the U.S. government for information leading to arrests, a sign of how difficult it was to build a case through normal channels when the host government's own forces treated the investigators as outsiders, not partners.
QHow much did a federal court order Sudan to pay the Cole victims' families, and when?
A U.S. federal judge, Robert G. Doumar, ruled on March 14, 2007, that the Sudanese government was liable for the bombing, and on July 25, 2007, ordered Sudan to pay $8 million to the families of the dead sailors, stating there was "substantial evidence" that Sudan's prior actions had induced the attack. Eight years later, in March 2015, a separate federal ruling went further, finding Iran complicit alongside Sudan, the first time any court held Iran partly responsible for the Cole bombing. The two rulings, years apart, show how liability for the attack kept expanding as evidence accumulated, reaching state sponsors far from the harbor in Aden.
