Kirk Lippold, USS Cole Commander, Pens ‘Front Burner: Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole’

Eleven months before the 9/11 attacks, suicide bombers sent by Osama bin Laden blew a huge hole in a U.S. Navy destroyer that had stopped to refuel in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors died and 39 were wounded on the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000. Now, as the alleged mastermind behind the Cole attack faces a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold is telling his story in a new book, “Front Burner: Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole.”