Allen was already a legend when he became assistant director of central intelligence for collection on June 2, 1998. Allen had survived a bit part in the 1986–87 Iran-Contra Affair; he had also famously predicted Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Now Allen was in charge of coordinating all secret intelligence gathering by the CIA and by more than a dozen other agencies of the U.S. government. Sixty-six days after he took on that sweeping responsibility, the big, bearish, bullheaded workaholic acquired an obsession. On August 7, Al Qaeda terrorists smashed suicide truck bombs into the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 213 people and wounding more than 4,500. Among the dead were a dozen Americans, including two CIA employees. Seven months earlier, Osama bin Laden had declared war on the United States in the name of Islam for the second time since 1996. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had long been on the CIA’s threat list, but from the day of the embassy bombings on, Charlie Allen’s chief goal in life was to destroy Al Qaeda—and see as many of its leaders as possible captured or killed, beginning with the elusive Osama bin Laden.
