Trojan Horse

💡 Did You Know?

Gibbs mentions the last time someone from Yemen talked to NCIS they were killed, two days before the terrorist attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000, this appears to be fiction as there was never any mention of someone trying to warn the U.S. about the attack, though there was increased chatter suggesting al-Qaeda was planning an unspecified attack in Yemen. The USS Cole (DDG-67) is a Flight I Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, she briefly stopped in the Yemen port of Aden for refueling when a small boat carrying two suicide bombers and 1,000 pounds of C4 pulled alongside the hull and exploded. The explosion ripped a 40-by-60-foot (12 by 18 m) gash in the ship's port side just underneath the ship's galley when lunch was being served causing the death of 17 sailors and injuring 37, as of 2025 it is the deadliest terrorist attack against a U.S. Navy vessel. The boat was able to approach the Cole since the rules of engagement at the time prevented opening fire on a civilian vessel that hadn't directly attacked, the Cole attempted to warn them off but their hails were ignored. This led to the Navy changing the rules of engagement to permit firing on a civilian vessel that approaches a warship without stating their intentions and ignores both radio hails and verbal warnings that announce the imminent use of deadly force. It also led to the development of several non-lethal countermeasures for use against small vessels, including the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) which can be used as both a powerful PA system to verbally warn off a vessel and emit a high power ultrasonic pulse to incapacitate a boat's crew; another weapon developed is the Laser Weapon System (LAWS), a directed energy weapon that can be used on a low-power wide beam to temporarily blind the crew of a boat or a high-power focused beam to disable engines or ignite fuel. The key planners of the attack were Osama Bin Laden and future hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who participated in the September 11 terrorist attacks as the leader of the group that hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, which flew into the Pentagon, killing 184 people; it was also suspected a few officials in the Yemen government helped planned the attack.