Dire Prediction From Osama's Bodyguard

Tells Bob Simon He Is Certain U.S. Will Be Attacked Again

(CBS) 
"Did you ever find out who betrayed Osama bin Laden that night?" Simon asks Abu Jandal.

"It was the Afghan cook," he replies.

Abu Jandal says the cook was not punished. "Sheikh Osama decided to let him go, so we let him go home. Sheikh Osama even gave him money and told him, 'Go provide for your children.' "

"Would you have liked to have killed the cook yourself?" Simon asks.

"Of course," Abu Jandal replies.

Asked how he would have done that, Abu Jandal said, "With a bullet in the head, and that would be the end of the story."

Once Abu Jandal established himself as the No. 1 bodyguard, bin Laden gave him other responsibilities as well.

In early 2000, bin Laden sent Abu Jandal back to Yemen on a sensitive mission. He told Abu Jandal that if the Taliban kicked al Qaeda out of Afghanistan they would need a new refuge, a new base of operations. Yemen would do just fine. So, bin Laden wanted a Yemeni wife. That, he said, would help him gain acceptance here. He gave Abu Jandal $5,000 in dowry money and told him to make it happen. Which Abu Jandal did.

He brokered bin Laden’s marriage to his fourth wife, a villager. She was 17 years old. Later that year, Abu Jandal just happened to be in Yemen, he says, when the USS Cole was bombed in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors were killed.

Abu Jandal says he didn't know anything about the attack before it happened, saying, "these operations are very secret."

But he says he knew the people who were involved.

Asked what kind of people they were, Abu Jandal replies, "Well, they are more than excellent."

In the wake of the bombing, the Yemeni authorities rounded up the al Qaeda operatives in the country. One month later, in November 2000, Abu Jandal was arrested at Sana'a's airport.

He tells Simon he was going to Afghanistan.

Abu Jandal was thrown in prison in Sana'a. The Yemeni authorities didn't charge him with anything but they held him for almost two years, most of the time in solitary confinement. One week after 9/11, he was taken from his cell and brought to an interrogation room. He says there were three guys waiting for him there. They were from the United States, from the FBI and they had questions.

"They asked about al Qaeda's capabilities, whether it had chemical weapons labs, whether it had other operations, where are its sleeper cells," Abu Jandal recalls.

And Abu Jandal says he told the FBI he was still committed to al Qaeda.

Abu Jandal didn’t hear about 9/11 when it happened. He was in jail and only found out about it days later from his FBI interrogators.

"If you had been asked to participate in the attacks on Sept. 11, would you have done it?" Simon asks.

"At that time, yes," Abu Jandal replies.

Abu Jandal remembers seeing Mohamed Atta in Afghanistan. But he was surprised when he learned that Atta was the leader on 9/11. Atta, Abu Jandal thought, was too inexperienced for such a big job.

"What’s your reaction when you see pictures on 9/11, when you see the video of the Twin Towers and the people falling out of the windows and people dying and shouting out in pain?" Simon asks Abu Jandal.

"I compare it to the images from the bombing of a shelter in Baghdad, to the killings of Muslims in Iraq by air strikes," he replies. "It reminds me of the pictures of those missiles fired on the Iraqi people with 'Happy Ramadan' written on them."

Abu Jandal says he admires American civilization, but will fight America until it gets out of the Middle East. He was released from prison in 2002. The Yemeni government made a deal with him: don't plot against Yemen, don’t try to leave the country and we'll leave you alone.

Why did he talk to 60 Minutes? Because he can. He's proud of what al Qaeda has done and, in Yemen, is out of America's reach.