By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 4, 2001; Page A12

FBI agents returned to Yemen last week to resume their investigation into last year's bombing of the USS Cole, having received adequate assurances of cooperation from Yemeni authorities, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

FBI agents and State Department security personnel returned to the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa on Thursday, with another team of investigators from the FBI and the Navy Criminal Investigative Service scheduled to arrive later this week, said the official, who asked not to be quoted by name.

"They have some additional leads, and the sense is the cooperation is good enough to send these people back -- they wouldn't be sending FBI agents back in if it wasn't," the official said.

A security plan worked out jointly by the State Department and the FBI has allayed the bureau's concern about threats directed at its investigators, the official said.

"There's still a lot of concern out there for their people, but nothing that would dissuade them from going back in," the official said.

The FBI withdrew its investigators from Yemen in June after intelligence reports indicated they had been targeted for attack by suspected terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi militant who is the bureau's top terrorism suspect. But the bureau's decision to evacuate its personnel also reflected a turf battle with the State Department over security and tensions with Yemeni officials over access to witnesses and suspects.

FBI investigators have clashed with Yemeni officials since the Cole was attacked Oct. 12 by suicide bombers who pulled alongside the warship in a skiff and detonated a massive explosive, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others aboard the destroyer.

Although senior Yemeni officials have said in recent weeks that they want to proceed with a trial for eight people they have arrested in connection with the bombing, FBI officials have asked for a delay so that they can continue gathering evidence against additional suspects.

FBI agents have been trying to determine whether bin Laden is linked to the bombing but have yet to announce a definitive relationship. Bin Laden, a fugitive in Afghanistan, has been indicted in New York for orchestrating the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Shortly after the FBI pulled its agents out of Yemen, a new bin Laden videotape began circulating in the Middle East in which the exiled Saudi millionaire hailed the bombing of the Cole.

Appearing in the video wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger, bin Laden recited a poem referring to the bombing and said: "And in Aden, they charged and destroyed a destroyer that fearsome people fear, one that evokes horror when it docks and when it sails."

Within days of the FBI's departure from Yemen, authorities in Sanaa arrested nine suspected terrorists for plotting attacks against the American investigators. Additional terrorist threats against the U.S. Embassy there resulted in its closure to the public from mid-June to mid-July.

Compounding the tensions at the embassy was a turf battle between a top FBI official supervising the Cole investigation, John O'Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Barbara K. Bodine, who believed the bureau had been overly aggressive in pursuing its probe, officials have said.

Bodine had barred O'Neill from returning to the country, fearing his tactics could strain relations between Yemen and the United States. One of the reasons behind the FBI's decision to evacuate its agents in June, the officials said, was Bodine's refusal to allow them to carry automatic rifles for protection.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker told reporters two weeks ago that the United States and Yemen were "committed to bringing the investigation of the USS Cole bombing to a successful conclusion."

"Currently we're working together on logistical and administrative requirements, as well as security arrangements, in order to send an investigative team back to Yemen," Reeker said.

O'Neill, a 31-year FBI agent who headed the counterterrorism section in the bureau's New York field office, retired last month. At the time, FBI sources confirmed that he was under investigation for leaving his briefcase filled with classified information in a Tampa hotel last year. The briefcase was stolen but found in another hotel a short time later, the sources said.