500 Days (43 page)

The man, the officials told Hussain, was Abu Zubaydah, a key player in al-Qaeda. If he was captured, American officials were confident they would gain unparalleled insight into the terror group’s inner workings, and possibly obtain the evidence they needed to track down bin Laden himself.

This would be, the officials cautioned, a very dangerous undertaking. The terrorists would be well armed with guns and explosives, and they had already demonstrated a willingness to kill. But the police couldn’t just go in shooting—finding out what the terrorists knew was the goal.

“You need to capture the subjects alive at all costs,” one of the Pakistanis told Hussain.

The chief called in reinforcements. More than one hundred officers were assigned to raid Shabaz Cottage, while others were stationed at checkpoints on roads in Faisalabad or dispatched to cover alternate means of escape.

•  •  •  

The police arrived at the mansion at 3:00
A.M.
and scaled the front gate. After snipping the electric wire at the top, they dropped down into the yard and made their way to a garage. Three guards were sleeping there, and the assault team subdued them. The police called out for the men inside to surrender. When there was no response, they bashed open the door and pushed their way inside.

Zubaydah was there. He and three other Arabs snapped up cash and fake passports in the house and ran upstairs to the roof, with the police just steps behind. Trapped, Zubaydah and the other men took a running leap off the house, soaring over barbed-wire fencing and landing on the roof of the villa next door. But the Pakistanis had anticipated that escape route—four officers were waiting for the Arabs and grabbed them. Zubaydah exploded in anger.

“You’re not Muslims!” he shouted.

“Of course we are,” one of the officers replied.

“Well, you’re American Muslims!” Zubaydah said.

Suddenly one of his comrades lunged at a police officer, grabbing his AK-47. A firefight broke out, and Zubaydah was hit in the stomach, the leg, and the groin. The man who grabbed the gun, Abu al-Haznat, was shot dead. Another terrorist and three police officers were injured.

John Kiriakou, a CIA agent, rushed to the scene and grabbed the senior Pakistani security officer. “Where is Abu Zubaydah?” he shouted.

The officer pointed to a bloodied body sprawled on the ground. “This is Abu Zubaydah,” he said.

This had to be a mistake, Kiriakou thought. He had studied Zubaydah’s appearance, and this guy didn’t look like him at all. He was fatter, maybe by forty pounds. His hair was wild. His face was different. Kiriakou sought out a colleague for advice.

“Get me a picture of his iris,” the colleague said. Optical identification through biometric scanning would do the job.

Kiriakou leaned down to Zubaydah. “Open your eyes!” he ordered. It was no use—the man’s eyes were rolled back in his head.

“Okay,” the colleague said. “Then get me a close-up of his ear.”

Ear
identification? That was something new to Kiriakou. The Dutch had been the first to try it and had solved a series of gas-station robberies by examining the image of an ear captured on video. The CIA adopted the technique soon after.

Kiriakou snapped a picture and, using his cell phone, sent it to his colleague.

A moment passed. “It’s him.”

Kiriakou looked down at Zubaydah. His wounds were severe; he was almost certainly going to die. They had to get him medical attention right away.

The senior Pakistani security officer disagreed. Zubaydah had killed one of his men. “We will fuck with him,” he said. “Then he’s going to die.”

No, Kiriakou snapped back. “I’m going to get fucked if he dies before we get him to the hospital,” he said. “Those are my orders. This is nonnegotiable.”

Zubaydah was handed off and dumped in the back of a Toyota mini truck that raced away from the scene.

•  •  •  

Shabaz Cottage and the other safe houses proved to be gold mines of intelligence. Searches turned up computers, three dozen memory disks, cell phones and notebooks filled with phone numbers, electronic notes, an al-Qaeda artillery manual, and ten thousand pages of other material. On a table was a partially built bomb, along with evidence that indicated it was to be used in an attack on a school. A roster on the wall listed the names of those in the house assigned kitchen duty; the most fascinating entry read “Saturday, Osama.”

Whatever resentments lingered between the United States and Pakistan over bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora melted away. The joint raid by police and security agents was celebrated as proof that Islamabad was becoming a full partner in the war on terror.

Pakistan soon enjoyed the fruits of that cooperation when the administration paid a bounty of millions of dollars for its help in capturing Zubaydah.

•  •  •  

The hospital room was stifling and infested with mosquitoes. Zubaydah lay in the bed motionless, with wires and plastic tubing connected to his body. A few feet away, John Kiriakou was sitting in a fold-up metal chair; he had been ordered to watch Zubaydah until he woke up. Hours passed as the agent swatted at the buzzing insects while sweating through a crimson T-shirt emblazoned with the image of SpongeBob SquarePants.

At last, Zubaydah stirred. Kiriakou walked to the head of the bed. His captive opened his eyes and fear spread across his face. His heart rate jumped, setting off an alarm. A doctor and nurse ran into the room and administered Demerol, a narcotic. Zubaydah drifted back to sleep.

Time passed. Zubaydah woke again for a few seconds, delirious and asking for wine. After another few hours, he came around a third time, fully conscious. He motioned to Kiriakou. The agent walked over and moved his oxygen mask.

“Please, brother,” Zubaydah said, weeping softly. “Kill me.”

“Kill you?”

“Yes, please, brother, kill me. Take the pillow, put it over my face, and kill me.”

“No, my friend, no one is going to kill you. You’re very important to us. We worked hard to find you. And we have a lot of questions we want to ask you.”

Zubaydah sobbed. “Please,” he moaned, “please kill me.”

•  •  •  

The Chilterns lie northwest of London, a vista of sweeping grasslands, honeysuckle-draped cottages, and the crack of cricket bats on plush village greens. Church bells ring out across the leafy stillness, adding an almost mystical aura to the scene’s unearthly beauty.

Unobtrusively tucked into the chalk hills is Chequers, the sixteenth-century mansion that serves as the official country residence of Britain’s prime minister. The estate overflows with treasures from European history, including letters written by Oliver Cromwell, Napoléon, and the poet Robert Browning, as well as a ring worn by Queen Elizabeth I.

While Chequers is traditionally used as a weekend getaway, Blair and his staff traveled there on Tuesday, April 2, for an in-depth and hard-edged debate about Iraq. The meeting with Bush at the Crawford ranch was three days away, and this would be Blair’s best opportunity to hammer out a strategy for bending the president’s will a bit closer to his own.

The British officials gathered at ten that morning on the first floor in the Long Gallery, and Blair described his predicament.

“I believe that Bush is in the same position I am,” he said. “It would be great to get rid of Saddam, but can it be done without terrible unforeseen consequences?”

British intelligence presented an assessment of the situation in Iraq. The state of its military forces was adequate, the opposition to Saddam was feeble, and
Saddam himself—well, he was a maniac. Those elements made a combustible and unpredictable mix. The consequences of an American-led invasion were anybody’s guess.

Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of defense staff, launched into a diatribe about the West’s near helplessness to influence the course of events in Iraq. Worse, he said, was the Bush team—members of the administration were secretive, even hiding information about the plans for Iraq from their own colleagues. It was hard to tell if
anyone
in Washington grasped the wider strategic picture.

“Only Rumsfeld and a few others know what’s being planned,” Boyce said to Blair, mispronouncing the name as Rums
field.
“You may speak to Bush or Rice, but do they really know what’s going on?”

Blair waved off Boyce’s doubts. “In the end, Bush will make the decisions,” he said.

Another problem—Blair had been pushing for a new U.N. Security Council resolution against Iraq before launching a military campaign, but the Americans didn’t think it necessary. Bush and his aides believed that earlier U.N. declarations about Iraq provided a sufficient legal basis for war.

Lieutenant-General Sir Anthony Pigott, who had coordinated Britain’s efforts in Afghanistan, was invited to give his views. It was possible, he said, to launch a full-scale invasion that culminated with an assault on Baghdad.

“It would be bloody,” he said, “And it would take a long time.”

Even then, he said, victory could not be proclaimed with the defeat of the Iraqi army and the overthrow of Saddam. The preparations for war
had
to include a realistic plan about how the allies would manage Iraq once the fighting ended. “The Americans believe they can replicate Afghanistan, but this is very, very different,” he said.

Boyle piped up again. A British soldier based in Tampa and working with U.S. Central Command, he said, had told his superiors in London that he could not get a read on General Tommy Franks. The Americans seemed to be planning for something later, maybe around New Year. By all appearances, Franks was considering using solely airpower and Special Forces to topple the Baathist regime. If so, the game plan was woefully inadequate.

“If they want us to be involved in providing forces,” Boyle said, “then we have to be involved in all the planning.”

The military men finished their presentation, and Blair stroked his chin.
True, he said, the Americans’ planning and strategy was flawed. But that left him caught in a conundrum.

“Do I support totally in public and deliver our strategy?” he asked. “Or do I put distance between us and lose influence?”

The primary issue, Pigott said, was defining the goal of any military assault. Was the central aim to target Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, or was it to oust Saddam and usher in a new regime?

“It’s regime change, in part because of WMD,” Blair said. “But more broadly because of Saddam’s threat to the region and the world.”

Just saying “weapons of mass destruction” would not persuade the public that this was a war worth fighting, Blair said. “People will say that we’ve known about WMD for a long time.”

So many uncertainties, so many problems. Only one thing was guaranteed, Blair said. “This will not be a popular war. And in the States, fighting an unpopular war and losing is not an option.”

•  •  •  

The U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield is located ninety miles southeast of Bangkok on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. During the Vietnam War, the United States used it as a forward operating base for B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC-135 Stratotankers, refueling aircraft of the Strategic Air Command. In the recent bombing runs over Afghanistan, U-Tapao served as an indispensable refueling station, although the Thai government kept that secret to avoid inflaming the country’s Muslim population.

Now, in April 2002, the United States turned to U-Tapao once more. A small, disused warehouse at the airfield was hastily secured as the site of a temporary secret prison where the CIA could hold and interrogate senior al-Qaeda operatives far from the public eye.

Their first guest was Abu Zubaydah. After receiving his medical treatment in Pakistan, he had been whisked by the CIA to U-Tapao for interrogation. Ali Soufan and Steve Gaudin—two FBI agents who had worked on the investigation of the 1998 embassy bombings—were dispatched by Washington to assist in the questioning.

Their supervisor, Charles Frahm, gave them specific instructions. The CIA was in charge of Zubaydah, and its operatives would call the shots. Zubaydah was not to be read his Miranda rights. If the CIA did anything that discomforted the two agents, they were to leave the facility and call headquarters.

Speed was of the essence. Interrogation subjects are at their most vulnerable from the chaos and trauma they feel just after being caught—the so-called shock of capture. The agents needed to get to Thailand fast so they could take advantage of this period of overwhelming confusion for Zubaydah.

Soufan and Gaudin arrived before the CIA interrogators. They went to Zubaydah and spoke with him in Arabic and English; Zubaydah was fluent in both languages. At first, Zubaydah insisted he was not the person that the agents thought. His name was Daoud, he said, not Zubaydah.

Soufan smiled. “How about I call you Hani?”

It was the nickname Zubaydah’s mother had given him as a child; Soufan had found that tidbit by digging through FBI files. Zubaydah couldn’t hide his surprise. These men had come prepared.

“Okay,” he said.

With that, the agents and the terrorist began to talk.

•  •  •  

Soon after, Zubaydah went into septic shock from his gunshot wounds. His condition was grave, and the CIA was not equipped to treat him. Worried that Zubaydah might die—taking his secrets with him—the agents rushed him to a nearby hospital.

Soufan and Gaudin stayed with Zubaydah, dabbing his lips with ice, cleaning him up after he soiled himself, changing his bandages, and pushing for better medical care. When he was conscious, they prayed with him.

“Ask God for strength,” Soufan told Zubaydah.

The agents weren’t acting solely out of compassion; rather, this was another tactic, known as “dislocation of expectations.” It is designed to disarm a suspect who is braced for harsh treatment. Most captured terrorists expected to be manhandled and tortured—they were caught off guard by acts of kindness from someone versed in their language and culture. Psychologically unsteady and deprived of a frame of reference, they often responded by cooperating.