How to Break a Terrorist (12 page)

A
RE YOU READY
?” I ask Steve. We’re in the ’gator pit finishing the pregame warm-up for Abu Raja. Behind us, Mary’s typing away at her computer, fuming over what just happened in the booth.

Steve looks over at Cliff.

“Yeah. I think we’ve got a good plan. Let’s go give it a shot.”

“Good luck,” Cliff tells him, shooting nasal spray into his nose.

Steve heads off to get Abu Raja. Before I leave for the Hollywood room, Cliff asks me, “Did you hear what happened to Bobby the other night?”

My heart stops.

“No.”

“He went out with a raid team up north.”

“Okay. That’s what he’s supposed to be doing.”

Bobby’s at an outstation, carrying out field interrogations.
When a raid team hits a house, whoever is inside is questioned on the spot by Bobby and an interpreter. He’ll be doing this until June—unless he gets hurt or killed. This SF team lost two members to a suicide bomber the month we arrived.

Cliff rubs his nose absently. “Well, the raid team approaches their target house. A twelve-year-old boy bursts through a door on the balcony holding an AK. A sniper shot him dead.”

“Holy shit.”

“Turns out the kid thought our guys were a Shia death squad coming for his family. He was trying to defend his parents.”

He lets that sink in. I feel a twist of guilt thinking of Yusif and the cost of this war to the civilian population.

“You want to know what the real kick in the gut was?”

“God, Cliff, just tell me.”

He looks slightly wounded, but gives it up anyway. “It turned out to be the wrong house.”

It’s horrible news. Intelligence is never perfect, and who knows how that house came to be targeted. It’s another reason why it’s so important that we are right when we get our information.

“That’s a tragedy,” I manage.

“Yeah. Thought you should know.” Cliff turns and heads back to his desk in the analyst’s pit.

“Thanks,” I say to his back. He waves a hand in response.

I hurry to the Hollywood room, notepad in hand. I arrive just as Abu Raja enters Steve’s interrogation booth. The guard sits him down, and Abu Raja removes his mask.

Steve asks about Abu Raja’s health, and the two exchange pleasantries. The interrogation flows from there. Steve puts a little more pressure on him. Abu Raja is not a strong man. He starts talking.

At one point, Steve revisits the farmhouse. “So tell me something, Abu Raja.”

“Yes, sir. What would you like to know?”

“I want to know why you were at the house.”

“I was at the house on orders from Abu Shafiq.”

“Did you know why you were going there?”

“No.”

“There were five of you in the car. Abu Gamal drove, right?”

“Yes.”

“Abu Haydar had the video camera.”

“Yes.”

“Was Abu Bayda the leader of your group, then?”

“No. I do not know why he was there.”

“Who put the whole group together?”

Abu Raja doesn’t answer at first. Instead, he looks up, directly into the camera. His face is a mask of despair. This is a man who cannot handle prison. A week here, and he’s already haggard and gaunt. Broken. I sympathize with him. How many pediatricians come to this pass? Those who make desperate choices.

“Abu Raja, come on. Who put the group together?”

He lets out a long sigh. His chin falls to his chest. “I did.”

I sit straight up.

“So on orders from your boss, Abu Shafiq, you gathered
Abu Haydar, your wife’s cousin Abu Gamal, and Abu Bayda?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know Abu Bayda?”

“I didn’t. Abu Shafiq knew him.”

Steve pummels Abu Raja with more questions, but Abu Raja won’t give up anything else today, and Steve finally ends it. A guard escorts Abu Raja back to his cell. Steve and I meet with Cliff in the ’gator pit.

“Abu Raja just admitted again that he was the leader of the Group of Five,” Steve says.

“Seriously?” Cliff says.

“Yes.”

“What do you think, Matthew?”

“I don’t know if I buy it.”

Steve considers that. “You know, I’m not sure I believe him either. Maybe he’s trying to cover for the real leader.”

“What? Why?” asks Cliff.

“For one thing,” Steve says, “he’s too much of a puss. The guy is a weak link.”

“Exactly,” I add. “He doesn’t act like a leader.”

“What do you mean?” Cliff asks.

“He doesn’t have the right aura,” Steve replies.

“Steve’s right,” I add, “Abu Raja is not an impressive man. He’s very smart, but he doesn’t exude confidence.”

“Could it be an act?”

Steve and I look at each other. Is Abu Raja running an approach on us? Is he purposely acting like a broken momma’s boy?

“Could be?” I say with a shrug.

Steve shakes his head, “I don’t think so, guys. Look at Abu Bayda. He’s much older, and he’s supposedly an imam, right?”

“Right,” Cliff confirms.

“Well, maybe he’s trying to protect Abu Bayda.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I think you’re right.”

“Write it up. Could be he’s telling the truth,” Cliff suggests.

Wheels within wheels are at play here. Even this break is suspect. If only we could get a little more from Abu Raja, maybe push him to reveal whether or not he’s running an approach on us. Randy will soon want to make way for the next wave of prisoners.

I
T’S AWKWARD TO
be the new guy and the senior interrogator. I’m meant to assign ’gators to detainees, but Randy has made it clear to me that Mary is to interrogate our top priorities whether I think she’s suitable or not. I have to approve every ruse or a trick in the booth and monitor the interrogations to make sure we’re in compliance with both the Geneva Conventions and the Department of Defense regulations. It’s my job to give advice on interrogation strategies. But the old-schoolers haven’t accepted the new methods.

One morning I hit my table right after ten o’clock. Ann comes by to chat. It’s been lonely without Bobby, and seeing her cheers me up.

“How’d it go with the remains of the Group of Five last night?” I ask. We still have Abu Haydar, Abu Raja, and Abu Bayda in the prison.

“Nathan had some luck with Abu Raja. The other two
aren’t talking. Lenny’s been working Abu Bayda hard with the You’re Totally Screwed routine.”

“I wish they’d come around.”

“I don’t think that will happen. Take a look.”

Across the ’gator pit, I see the conference room filling up an hour before our eleven o’clock meeting.

“What’s going on?”

Ann shrugs. I get up to go check it out. As I get to the door, I stop an analyst and ask, “What’s up?”

The analyst looks distinctly uncomfortable. Something is afoot. “Uh, we’re just, um, going to discuss Abu Bayda.”

That’s interesting. The senior interrogator should have been invited.

I slip into the room and take a seat at the back. Mary walks in. So do Tom and an analyst named Edith, Cliff’s counterpart on the night shift. Though none of them look at me, I’m the two-ton elephant in the room. It becomes obvious that they deliberately excluded me from this meeting.

Everyone here is an old-schooler and an Iraq veteran. Most have been in country for a year. I resolve to stay quiet and listen.

Mary starts things off. “Okay, we know Abu Bayda has to be somebody important, right?”

Tom agrees. “Yeah. You can tell by his mannerisms that he’s the leader of the group.”

Heads nod all around. Edith adds, “He’s a player, alright. He’s definitely got a lot of power.”

Mary says, “He’s a lot older than the others. And he’s an imam.”

More nods.

“So far, we haven’t gotten anything out of him,” says Tom.

“Nothing,” Mary echoes. “How do we get him talking?”

Lenny is quick to offer his two cents, “Listen, we just need to get him to understand that his fate is in our hands. We control him. If he doesn’t talk, he’s going to swing.”

Mary agrees. “Yeah. He’s not getting out of here without our help.”

Edith chimes in, “He’s arrogant, right?”

Tom, Mary, and Lenny nod. Edith continues, “Look, he thinks he’s powerful. But actually, now he’s powerless. You need to break him down until he realizes he’s got no power, no influence.”

“Right,” Lenny says, “Tear down his self-respect. That should level the playing field.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this. If you tried to crush an American colonel’s sense of self with words alone, would it work?

I stay silent.

The conversation continues. All the old-school buzzwords are tossed around. The more I hear, the more agitated I become. Randy has set Abu Bayda as our top priority, followed by Abu Haydar and Abu Raja. Mary, Tom, and Lenny have been interrogating Abu Haydar and Abu Bayda. They’ve never built rapport with these guys, gotten to know them as people, or earned their trust. Why do they think any of their strategies are going to work? You can’t get to home plate if you’ve never rounded first base.

A lull falls over the meeting. I can’t help myself. I hear myself ask, “Hey, does Abu Bayda have any kids?”

Edith actually laughs. Another person guffaws. Lenny looks pissed, and Mary refuses to acknowledge me. Edith
chooses to respond. With a
you’re the new guy so I’m going to give you the 411
tone in her voice, she lectures me: “He’ll never fall for that. When he joined Al Qaida he wrote off his family. They all do.”

Mary mirrors Edith’s tone. “Yeah. Once they join up, they’ve got no loyalty to their family—only to Al Qaida.”

More snickering. I feel humiliated. Could I be this far off the mark?

Abu Ali.

Have I misread what’s going on here so badly?

Zaydan.

I may be the new guy, but haven’t I proven myself?

Abu Gamal.

No. The fleeting self-doubt evaporates. I know I’m right on this one.

The hostility in the room is palpable now. I am the senior interrogator, but this clique doesn’t respect me or my opinions. Should I confront them? Should I lay the evidence on the table? Should I remind them of the breaks we’ve made these past three weeks with Love of Family approaches? With earned trust and respect?

No. They are convinced their methods of fear and control are the only way to win in the booth.

Should I point out that nothing is more important in Arab culture than family? Their family bonds are far stronger than ours, and no Iraqi would give up his family.

No. They don’t care about Arab culture.

Should I point out that true Kool-Aid-drinking Al Qaida believers are exceptionally rare? Are they blind to the nuances of this war? I’ve read that most Senators and Congress
men back home do not understand the Shia-Sunni split in Iraq. Our ignorance of our enemy after three years of fighting astonishes me.

For most of our detainees, Al Qaida is an expedient, nothing more. The organization reached out to Sunnis at a moment of great crisis, and many Sunnis felt they had no choice but to accept their aid. Some of our detainees have had moral qualms about Al Qaida. Few of them espouse the Al Qaida ideology or believe in it.

I want to look around the room and say, “Iraqis are not jihadists. We can’t fit them into one category. Not every Iraqi sells out his family when he joins Al Qaida.”

I start to say it, but then stop. Apart from Tom, nobody here has any interest in the new techniques. This generation of interrogators was deeply steeped in the force-on-force mentality back home, in their previous tours here in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo.

Instead of adding to the growing rift, I get up and leave the room. I’ll let what happens in the booth speak for itself.

Had they been amenable, I would have suggested the opposite approach. Instead of trying to crush Abu Bayda’s self-importance, why not use rapport to build him up and then earn his respect by demonstrating a knowledge of his culture and religion and even sympathy towards his cause?

I return to the ’gator pit struggling with my emotions. As a leader, I can’t let them influence my decisions, but I can’t help but feel infuriated. I’m angry, not with the way they treated me but with their unwillingness to listen to new ideas. Change does not come easy.

At eleven o’clock, we gather in the conference room.
Those in the previous meeting studiously avoid me. I can sense that if I don’t figure out a way to manage this schism, it will damage our efforts.

Randy comes in and puts his foot up on a chair. “Listen up. I know you all are working as hard as you can. We’ve made some good progress in the past few days. But the pressure is on us to deliver. President Bush called the task force commander again. General Casey is coming personally to check on us. We’ve got to work our way up the ladder.”

He pauses, then changes gears, “Okay, let’s see where we stand.”

A photo of Abu Bayda’s face appears on the wall.

“Lenny?”

Lenny stands and gives a short summary of his interrogations with Abu Bayda.

“He hasn’t given up anything so far.”

Randy asks, “What’s your recommendation?”

Lenny pauses. “Retain and exploit.”

Randy looks to Cliff for an analyst opinion, and Cliff nods in approval.

“Agreed. Next. Abu Haydar.” His face appears on the wall.

Lenny remains standing and says, “He still claims he was in the house to film a wedding.”

Randy’s face grows more strained as he listens. Lenny’s been working Abu Haydar for over a week without any results.

Lenny looks uncertain when Randy asks for his recommendation. “He’s not working us up the ladder. Transfer to Abu Ghraib,” he finally replies. This leaves the recommendation up to the detainee’s analyst.

Randy turns to Cliff. “Well?”

“I agree, he’s not giving us anything that Abu Raja can’t give us.”

“Negative,” Randy says. “He’s staying. Moving on. Abu Raja.”

His photo hits the wall.

Nathan stands. So far, I’ve been very impressed with Nathan. He’s a mature ’gator, he served in the army. He retired a few years ago and started his own business in Utah. A family man with several kids, he’s in Iraq as a civilian contractor and he’s proven to be flexible and creative. Together, Nathan and Steve have made significant progress on Abu Raja.

Nathan summarizes, “Abu Raja is talking. Once we got past the wedding story, anyway. He’s told us that his boss is Abu Shafiq. Abu Shafiq told him to get Abu Haydar and bring him to the farmhouse with a video camera.”

Randy asks, “What about locations on Abu Shafiq?”

“Same as before. He said he meets him at a falafel stand in Baghdad or at a mosque in Mansur district.”

Steve chimes in, “He still denies knowing that there would be suicide bombers in the house. He says that Abu Shafiq just told him where to go, not what to expect there.”

“Anything else?” Randy asks.

“That’s it,” Nathan says. “Recommend retain and exploit.”

Again Randy looks at Cliff, and Cliff nods in agreement.

“Okay. Abu Raja stays,” Randy finishes.

The meeting continues. We go through all the current detainees. After we finish and I make the assignments for the day, I walk back to Randy’s office.

“I’d like to try something new,” I begin.

Randy appears interested, “Okay, what’ve you got?”

“I’d like to switch up interrogators on Abu Haydar and Abu Bayda.”

A torn expression crosses his face. My request has struck a nerve. “Won’t happen. Sorry. My hands are tied.”

What is going on here?

“There’s no way?”

“Zero. None. Don’t ask again.”

“Okay, then. Thanks.”

I leave Randy’s office thoroughly disappointed. It is the primary role of the senior interrogator to assign detainees to ’gators. Somebody above Randy is micromanaging us.

When I return to the ’gator pit, Ann’s left. Steve is busy going over the details of the next pass at Abu Raja with Cliff. Mary’s huddled with Edith. Today she’s scheduled to interrogate both Abu Bayda and Abu Haydar.

I find my chair and start going through some paperwork. My intuition tells me that the Group of Five holds the key. If we can just get the right approach, we may just find that next rung up the ladder. I pull out a notebook and study it. Since I arrived, I’ve been updating a wire diagram that shows the connections between our detainees. Right now, we have too many empty boxes and too big a gap between our detainees and Zarqawi, who’s name sits at the top of the diagram. He’s at least one or two steps on the ladder above the others.

Where do Abu Bayda, Abu Raja, and Abu Haydar fit in? And who is this Abu Shafiq? Nobody else has mentioned him. Did Abu Raja invent that name, or is he a missing rung on our ladder? If so, which wing: religious or operational?

I don’t know. But we’re running out of time. Every morning, the news brings fresh waves of terror from Baghdad.
Bodies turn up every sunrise, bound with bullet wounds in their heads. Most show signs of torture. Shia death squads wreak havoc with kidnappings and random murders. The Sunnis send suicide bombers into Shia marketplaces. The country is spiraling out of control.