The Fattest Sitting Duck

The threat to U.S. ships and personnel in Aden is considered so great that the
highest possible defensive posture has been in effect for days.

Yet as CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports, of all the potential U.S. targets in the inflamed Middle East, the juiciest — the USS Cole — is still sitting disabled in the port of Aden.

Not only that, the thousands of American personnel who've been brought in to repair and protect the ship and to investigate the attack are also feared to be sitting ducks.

That's why heavily-armed Yemeni troops are manning a security cordon around the U.S. operations center in a hotel on shore where more than a hundred FBI, military and diplomatic personnel have been working, and why U.S. Marines are manning positions out of sight inside.

It's also why a 24-hour Marine guard is being maintained in small boats patrolling around the Cole, something the Navy confirmed today was not the case when she came into this risky harbor and was attacked by a bomb-carrying fiberglass skiff.

To try to reduce the exposure here, more and more of the operation is being transferred to the American armada lying offshore, a fleet that is now up to eight ships and which is carrying 2,000 sailors and another 2,000 Marines.

The American presence here was due to be scaled down anyway as the emergency repair work on the Cole was completed.

Brig. Gen. Abdullah Ali Eleiwah, head of the Yemeni investigative team, would only say Tuesday that the probe is "moving forward."

Intelligence analysts continue to focus on Osama bin Laden's organization. But a picture is emerging of the men authorities believe were behind the Oct. 12 attack. It indicates they had resources, expertise and patience.

From a hilltop apartment with a roof commanding a sweeping view of the harbor, they spied on ships tat stopped to refuel, probably using a pair of binoculars investigators found at the site.

They were sometimes joined by a few other men. At two other locations, they built the bombs that would blast a hole in the USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others.

The men believed to be behind the attack hardly talked to their neighbors. But they spent a lot of time on the beach, grilling fishermen about the comings and goings of ships in the harbor and how far they could go in their boats.

They paid a total of at least $530 a month—a lot of money in Aden—in rent for three locations Yemeni officials believe were used for the attack. The two men introduced themselves to some as investors.

A few days before the attack on the Cole, the two men told neighbors they were going to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage and planned to return in late December after the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

They have not been seen since the blast the Aden harbor, which U.S. officials believe was the work of suicide bombers.

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