Twenty-five years ago this Sunday, the USS Cole sat refueling in Aden Harbor, Yemen, when a small boat approached carrying two suicide bombers. The explosion that followed killed 17 American sailors and wounded 39 others. It marked a turning point in modern warfare as Al Qaeda’s first successful, direct attack on a U.S. naval vessel.
Now, a new documentary series is bringing fresh scrutiny to that October 12, 2000, attack and revealing intelligence that was available years before 9/11—information that might have disrupted the terror plots that followed.
“COLE: Al Qaeda’s Strike Before 9/11,” a three-part docuseries from BIG Media TV, premiered today on The Daily Wire following a private screening at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. The screening drew 200 attendees, including Cole survivors, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who investigated the attack and hunted down those responsible.
A Story Too Long in the Shadows
Steven W. Hersem, who served as Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI and later as Deputy Director of Community HUMINT for the CIA, worked as consulting producer on the series. He describes it as two years of research and countless hours of interviews that revealed “critical information that few Americans have ever heard.”
The documentary examines not just the attack itself, but the intelligence failures and overlooked warnings that preceded it. According to the filmmakers, the series challenges long-held assumptions about what could have been prevented.
“Unfortunately it’s also a story of ignored warnings, and paying attention to the wrong things,” Jon Loew, CEO of BIG Media, noted in remarks about the project. “Are we paying attention to the wrong things again?”
Heroism Amid Devastation
Commander Kirk Lippold, who commanded the USS Cole from 1999 to 2001, worked closely with the production team to tell the story of his crew’s response to the attack. Among the 17 fallen were two women, the first American servicewomen ever killed in combat.
The blast tore a 40-foot-wide hole in the destroyer’s port side, nearly sinking the vessel. What followed was an extraordinary effort by the surviving crew to save their ship and each other: over 96 hours of continual effort to fight fires, contain the flooding, and perform rescue operations.
“It’s a story of amazing bravery and heroism, and the actions of Commander Lippold and the crew saved the ship and many more lives,” Loew said.
The series traces the journey from the moments before the attack through the painstaking FBI and CIA investigation and pursuit of the terrorists involved. This hunt would eventually lead to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.
A Watershed Moment
The Cole bombing represented a watershed in 21st-century warfare. It was the first time Al Qaeda had successfully targeted a U.S. military vessel, and it prompted immediate international military response. Yet the attack also stood as a warning sign: one that, the documentary suggests, was not fully heeded before the September 11, 2001, attacks that followed less than a year later.
The series examines intelligence that had been gathered in the years leading up to both attacks, raising difficult questions about what might have been prevented with different priorities or responses.
Global Premiere
“COLE: Al Qaeda’s Strike Before 9/11” premiered October 10 on DailyWire+, and is set to air this month on Groupe TF1’s Histoire in France and RTL Deutschland’s NTV in Germany.
The filmmakers position the documentary as both a tribute to the 17 sailors who gave their lives and a necessary reckoning with a story that has remained largely untold for a quarter century.
As the nation marks this somber anniversary, the series offers an opportunity to remember not just the attack itself, but the courage of those who responded and to reconsider the lessons that may still be relevant today.
