Intelligence Report Cautioned Over Assault on Mall, Where Signals of Impending Event Were Missed

Getty Images

NAIROBI, Kenya—Raheem Biviji was inside Diamond Trust bank, waiting for a clerk to deposit his check, when the gunfire started.

He darted inside the bank's vault, and huddled there with 30 other people. Through the cracked door they saw the legs of Islamic militants scurrying past. It was 12:20 p.m. on Sept. 21, and shots and explosions would go on for hours at the popular shopping complex. "It just looked like there was a war inside the mall," Mr. Biviji said.

That al-Shabaab fighters moved so quickly and deeply into Westgate mall, carrying grenades and belt-fed machine guns, speaks to apparent intelligence failures, security breaches and a brave but confused initial response on the part of soldiers and police.

At least 67 people were killed in the four-day siege that ended Tuesday night. Hundreds were saved in moments of heroism. Now, part of the nation's trauma is untangling how the brutal attack happened in the first place.

It wasn't exactly a surprise.

A year before the assault, a Kenyan government intelligence report warned of a potential attack at Westgate, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The briefing, dated Sept. 21, 2012, said Somali militants from the group al-Shabaab were planning to target the part-Israeli-owned mall. It didn't provide evidence to back that claim.

"The following suspected al-Shabaab operatives are in Nairobi and are planning to mount suicide attacks on undisclosed date, targeting Westgate mall," the brief stated.

Another intelligence briefing from February warned of attacks like those that struck Mumbai in late 2008, "where the operatives storm into a building with guns and grenades and probably hold hostages."

Presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu declined to speak about the Kenyan intelligence report, and declined to say whether officials adjusted security precautions based on the briefings.

In the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani militants attacked luxury hotels, a train station and a Jewish center, killing more than 160 people. The assault on Nairobi's Westgate mall by al-Shabaab militants was similar in style, but the assailants' nationalities seemed more diverse, officials and witnesses said.

One orthodontist trapped inside his clinic said he saw two tall and skinny men in their early 20s, who, he said, looked like they were from Somalia. Others said they saw men who had lighter skin and spoke Arabic. Some heard English; several witnesses said they saw a pale-looking woman who shouted "Allah!" as she shot people.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku said a ninth suspect was arrested on Sunday, but he refused to answer questions about the identities or nationalities of any of the alleged attackers. "It is premature to release these details now," he said.

Some of the survivors said the attackers asked people to identify themselves if they were Muslim, and let those people go. They also heard militants blaming Kenyans for shedding blood as peacekeeper troops in Somalia, hinting at the attackers' motivation.

As the siege unfolded, the militant group praised its fighters inside the mall and promised more attacks. "The mesmeric performance by the #Westgate Warriors was undoubtedly gripping, but despair not folks, that was just the premiere of Act 1," according to a message on the group's official Twitter account.

Two days after the siege ended, on Thursday, Interpol issued an international arrest notice for Samantha Lewthwaite, a British woman who is the widow of one of four London suicide bombers who killed 56 people in 2005. The Kenyan government is investigating the 29-year-old Ms. Lewthwaite in relation to the Nairobi shopping-mall attacks; she is also wanted in relation to explosives-related charges connected to a 2011 terror plot.

In the month leading up to the Westgate attack, signals appeared to have been missed in the mall itself.

Kenyan authorities said after the attack they discovered an explosives-laden vehicle that was parked in the basement parking lot for more than a month before the Sept. 21 attack, according to a Western security officer. The officials believe that was part of an effort to stockpile ammunition, the officer said.

Even before the siege was over, the Kenyan government asked owners of cars parked at the mall to come with their registrations to pick them up—an apparent effort to counter any further explosives risks in the parking lot.

One member of an elite police unit who responded to the attack, and who worked previously at the Westgate, suspected a shop had been rented before the attack so militants could move firepower through a freight entrance. Officials haven't responded to questions about that possibility.

Tony Sahni, who oversaw private security guards at Westgate for the security company Securex, confirmed that goods going through the tenants' freight elevator aren't checked by security, although he argued that doing so would be too time-consuming a task, especially for the mall's big Wal-Mart-like store, called Nakumatt.

"Are you going to check everything that goes into that store?" he asked.

The mall—a gathering place for Nairobi's elite—wasn't unprotected. About 40 unarmed guards were on duty Saturday at various entrances to the mall and patrolling common areas, Mr. Sahni said. About 12:15 p.m., Mr. Sahni said, three cars drove up to Westgate and at least three people got out of each vehicle and ran toward different entrances.

Security guard Ben Mulwa, at the wheel of his Mercedes sedan, had just pulled into the mall's parking garage when he heard the gunfire roar. Mr. Mulwa, 31, ducked behind a flower bed with another guard. The two looked at each other, he said, realizing they had picked a poor hiding place.

Moments later, four gunmen fired into the flowers. Mr. Mulwa saw the flash of blood fly from his colleague's head, a shot that killed him. Then one of the gunmen turned to him. "What I remember is I saw his face," said Mr. Mulwa. "It was a very cold face."

The first shot grazed his forehead; another ricocheted into his knee. The gunman moved on. Police arrived and Mr. Mulwa limped away.

Those who initially responded were members of the Flying Squad, a paramilitary arm of the police that deals with organized crime, said a police officer from another unit. Flying Squad members were already on the scene when he got to Westgate two hours into the attack, he said. So were off-duty police and members of a civilian neighborhood defense group. Everybody was shooting.

The policeman ran over to a colleague who had arrived before him. "Who are the enemies?" he asked. "Shoot anyone with a hijab," or head scarf, the second policemen said, according to his colleague.

Dharmesh Vaya had just dropped off his wife and children at a cooking competition on the roof. Before his daughter, 16-year-old Midal, had a chance to compete, the 44-year-old banker was sorting out a problem with his iPad when his wife Jyotibala called to ask him get the kids something to eat. A few minutes after Mr. Vaya entered the supermarket with his two children and a nephew, they heard shooting.

"Ta-ta-ta—I thought it was a bank robbery," Mr. Vaya said.

A bank robbery it wasn't. The shooters never even entered the second-floor bank where Mr. Biviji was hiding in the vault with others.

Mr. Biviji and the others were rescued by Kenyan soldiers and members of a community response team at about 5:30 p.m. and walked out of the bank, past the day's carnage. As gunfire intensified, the military moved in to the mall and the Kenyan police withdrew.

The policeman with the elite police squad took four civilians hiding with him down the escalator and out the front entrance. But he said their retreat cost them ground against the militants. Once it got dark, the Kenyan soldiers also withdrew.

Militants began to roam the mall freely, hunting for those still alive. Peter Ouma, a 25-year-old construction worker, survived until morning hiding under the stairs. "They were knocking on the doors, and saying 'Police, open!' And then if you opened the door, they killed you," he said.

Sunday and Monday mornings brought more gunfire and blasts, despite government assurances the situation had been brought under control. On Tuesday afternoon, the Kenyan government said that part of three floors had collapsed. Kenyan soldiers at the scene said the collapse resulted from firing rocket-propelled grenades in a part of the building that soldiers said militants had rigged with explosives.

In an address to the nation later that night, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the militants had been defeated. But victory came at a cost.

Mr. Vaya, the banker, survived gunfire in the supermarket with his children, but his wife had been killed at the Nakumatt entrance when she came to look for her family. On Sunday, he returned to the mall to collect his black Toyota Land Cruiser. Security guards escorted him out through the devastated mall.

The Indian-born banker, wearing flip-flops and a short-sleeved plaid shirt, was reluctant to describe what he saw inside. "This is a beautiful country. I would not want to leave this place," he said. "It's so sad."

—Nicholas Bariyo and Idil Abshir in Nairobi, Drew Hinshaw in Accra, Ghana, and Devon Maylie in Johannesburg contributed to this article.

The groundbreaking dialogue between Iran and the U.S. has raised speculation of further advances to ease their 34-year diplomatic estrangement. But the two countries have overlapping interests across the Middle East and beyond that are sharply at odds.

___

SYRIA: Iran views the regime of President Bashar Assad as a centerpiece of its regional influence. Syria is a critical gateway for supplies to Iran's main anti-Israel force, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria also offers Iranian warships a friendly Mediterranean port during their few trips through the Suez Canal. The U.S. has backed the Syrian political opposition, but is wary of the growing presence of rebel fighters inspired by al-Qaida and other extremist ideologies. Washington has put on hold possible military strikes to punish Assad's government for suspected chemical attacks in August. Instead, it has supported a Russian-drafted plan to collect and eventually dismantle Syria's chemical arsenal, but says military options could be revived if the effort stalls.

___

ISRAEL: Iran backs the anti-Israel forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon and has ties to Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah's last major confrontation with Israel was a summer war in 2006. Rockets are sporadically fired from Gaza, which was the target of an Israel incursion that ended in early 2009 in response to widespread barrages. Israel remains America's main ally in the region.

___

GULF ARAB STATES: The Sunni-ruled states from Kuwait to Oman are mainstay Western allies and view Iran — in differing degrees — as a rival. Saudi Arabia often leads the denunciations by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council of alleged Iranian plots to destabilize their ruling systems. The U.S. has deep military interests across the region, including access to air bases, thousands of ground troops in Kuwait and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. An occasional flash point has been the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the route for about one-fifth of the world's oil. In the past, Iran has threatened to block the narrow waterway in retaliation for Western sanctions.

___

IRAQ: Iran has considerable influence with the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It also is believed to have ties to Shiite militias that waged attacks on U.S. troops before their withdrawal. The U.S. maintains a strong political presence in Iraq and ties with the government.

___

AFGHANISTAN: Iran has strong cultural and linguistic ties with western Afghanistan and has bolstered its influence there since the fall of the Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Iran had been an archenemy of the Taliban, but ties have improved in recent years. The U.S. has troops in the country and plans a military withdrawal by the end of next year, but seeks to remain closely engaged in Afghanistan's affairs.

Bill Clinton: When It Comes to Obamacare, GOP 'Begging for America to Fail'

The Republican Party is "begging for America to fail" by rooting for President Obama's signature health care law to fail, former President Bill Clinton said during an interview for "This Week" with ABC's George Stephanopoulos,

"I've never seen a time - can you remember a time in your lifetime when a major political party was just sitting around, begging for America to fail … I don't know what's going to happen. But I'll be shocked if it fails," Clinton, who attempted during his first term as president to overhaul the country's healthcare system in the early 1990s, said during an interview taped Thursday in New York while the annual Clinton Global Initiative was taking place.

A recent ABC News-Washington Post-poll found that more than half of Americans are opposed to the Affordable Care Act. But for his part, Clinton is optimistic that with time, the law - known more commonly as "Obamacare" - will grow in popularity.

"I just think that when all these dire predictions don't come out, if they don't - I believe that pretty soon, within the next several years, this'll be like Medicare and Medicaid. And it'll be a normal part of our life. And people will be glad it's there," the former president told ABC News.

READ: Clinton Calls Parts of House GOP Proposal to Raise Debt 'Chilling'

Clinton was responding to a recent suggestion by Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's political future was tied to the success or failure of Obamacare. Graham said he thinks the law will fail.

Clinton told Stephanopoulos he was "not at all" concerned about the potential failure of the Affordable Care Act having any impact on a potential run by his wife for the White House in 2016.

"I think this bill's already produced a lot of good results and every - look, they are desperate for this bill to fail, because if it's not a failure, their whole - everything they've been telling us since 1980 that government's bad is wrong. They so badly want it to fail," he said.

Since being passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act has been a political lightning rod and has been subject to attempts by Republicans to delay and defund it. The law is at the center of the current fight in Congress that could lead to a government shutdown, which would be the first in almost 20 years.

Clinton: GOP 'begging for America to fail'

Former President Bill Clinton lashes out at Republicans' "dire predictions" for Obamacare.
Addresses wife's 2016 ambitions

NSA’s ‘US Assassination Program’ About to be Unmasked

House unveils yet another proposal to tie Obamacare delay to budget bill

With mere hours left before government funding expires at midnight Monday, House Republicans unveiled another proposal to keep the government open that also would delay Obamacare's individual mandate to buy health insurance and prohibit congressional staff members from accessing insurance subsidies under the controversial health care program.

House Republican leaders pitched the new plan to the GOP caucus Monday after the Democrat-led Senate rejected a previous Republican proposal to fund the government that would have delayed the entire health care law and abolished an unpopular tax on medical devices. The new plan will likely pass the House, but not with unanimous approval from the party: Several conservative lawmakers emerged from the meeting Monday saying they would vote against it because it does not go far enough to defund or delay Obamacare.

The latest iteration is not, however, expected to pass in the Senate, which could result in a government shutdown. On Monday, Senate Democratic leaders promised again to reject any plan that aims to hurt the health care law.

As a result of Republicans refusing to hold a budget conference to set spending levels for the year, Congress is funding the government with short-term, stop-gap spending bills called "continuing resolutions" that must be approved when old ones expire. Barring an agreement on a new resolution by the end of Monday, parts of the federal government will close down until the parties can reach a compromise.

Earlier this month, House Republicans passed their first version of a spending bill but added a controversial amendment that would defund Obamacare. After a lengthy debate over the bill in the Democrat-controlled Senate, which included a 21-hour protest speech from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the upper chamberrejected the House bill and returned its version with the Obamacare funding reinserted.

Senate Democratic leaders warned that they would accept nothing short of a “clean” continuation of funding — one without riders such as defunding Obamacare — a move that practically dared Republicans to blink.

With the clock ticking, House Republicans dug in their heels deeper. Over the weekend, they approved another bill, the one that would delay Obamacare for a year and permanently abolish a tax on medical devices. That's the bill the Senate rejected Monday.

House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, chided Senate Democrats Monday for waiting until the day before a shutdown to act and reiterated the House’s intention to use the shutdown battle as a vessel to cripple the health care law.

"This law is not ready for prime time. The House has done its work,” Boehner said on the House floor. “It's time for the Senate to listen to the American people just like the House has listened to the American people and pass a one-year delay of Obamacare."

“I suspect I will be speaking to the leaders today, tomorrow and the next day," Obama said.

There are several paths House Republicans could take between now and midnight: The easiest way forward, of course, would be to simply pass a “clean” bill. The vote would likely pass the House, but it would require help from House Democrats — a scenario that would be unusual, because House Republican leaders rarely bring bills the floor that don't have support from a majority within the GOP conference. House Democratic leaders said in a joint press conference on Monday that they would be able to provide enough votes to Boehner if he puts a clean bill to a vote.

If Boehner goes the route of a clean bill, he could choose one that funds the government for only a few days, which would give both parties more time to negotiate. (Or rather, start negotiating.) Even less likely than this already unlikely scenario would be for Boehner to hold a vote on a bill that provides funding into November.

If Boehner adopts the clean-bill option, however, he would almost surely face a revolt from conservative members of the House Republican conference, a group that has already strong-armed him into moving forward with the shutdown strategy.

The clean bill path is looking increasingly unlikely. After the House GOP meeting Monday, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said there was "no" chance that the House would pass a clean continuing resolution by the shutdown deadline.

Before the House chose to attack Obamacare using the mandatory spending bill, House Republicans had planned instead to use an upcoming vote to raise the federal government’s debt limit as the vehicle for delaying the law. However, with support from Cruz and his allies in the Senate, House conservatives demanded action immediately. Boehner relented, and the federal government could face a shutdown as a result.

House unveils new proposal to avert shutdown

With hours to go before a government stoppage, the GOP tries to tie an Obamacare delay to the budget bill.
Unlikely to pass Senate