500 Days (44 page)

As Zubaydah’s health improved, the agents questioned him again. They had come to Thailand with a handheld computer containing pictures of suspected al-Qaeda operatives, in hopes that Zubaydah would identify them. Gaudin asked Soufan to show Zubaydah a photograph of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, a suspect in the 1998 embassy bombings. The wrong picture popped up.

Zubaydah stared at the photo. “How do you know Mukhtar?” he asked.

“We know all about Mukhtar,” Soufan replied without skipping a beat.

He was lying. The FBI had been struggling to identify a person called
“Mukhtar” who had been mentioned in bin Laden recordings. The CIA had been pursuing leads about the man for a year, but it wasn’t the top priority. The name seemed like just another drop in an ocean of data.

But by pretending he knew of Mukhtar, Soufan retained dominance in the interrogation. Had he expressed excitement about the name, Zubaydah would have realized he had information that the agent coveted and could have seized the position of power merely by clamming up. In this game of mental poker, Soufan had no choice but to make a high-stakes bluff.

Soufan moved on to other pictures, then casually returned to the photograph of Mukhtar.

Zubaydah looked up. “How did you know he was the mastermind of 9/11?”

Neither agent answered. Instead, they plowed ahead on other topics, silently containing their elation.

After the night’s questioning, they forwarded the information to Washington. CIA analysts pored over their records about Mukhtar. They located an August 28 cable that gave the man’s real name.

Mukhtar was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

•  •  •  

How, the CIA officials debated, would they force Zubaydah to
really
talk?

Sure, the FBI had made some headway, but the information was mostly flotsam. Admitting who he was? Identifying Mukhtar? Not enough.

Once again—as they had with al-Libi before whisking him off to Egypt for more abusive interrogation—agency officials believed that their captive knew far more than he was letting on. A source had revealed that Zubaydah had assembled plans to strike Israel, or Saudi Arabia, or perhaps India. His name had been linked to a plot involving an attack on a school—and possibly not just one. Evidence confirming that intelligence had turned up in Zubaydah’s safe house. There, authorities had found a map of a British school in Lahore near a table loaded with bomb components. Then there was “chatter” being intercepted by the NSA—it was spiking again, just as it had been before 9/11.

Something bad was about to happen; people were about to die. There was no time, agency officials argued, for the FBI’s treasured “relationship building.” If Zubaydah wouldn’t speak, then the CIA had to pry the information out of him.

At a series of meetings at agency headquarters in Langley, top counterterrorism experts floated ideas for tactics. Perhaps they should place Zubaydah in a cell filled with corpses. Surround him with naked women. Administer electric shocks to his teeth.

None of the agency officials knew much about interrogating captured terrorists, and all but one man in the room expressed doubts about which road to take. That lone exception was Jim Mitchell, the former SERE psychologist who had analyzed the Manchester Manual for the CIA. Despite his own lack of expertise in the methodology of interrogations or the psychology of Arab terrorists, Mitchell’s calm self-assurance captivated the others in the room.

“The thing that will make him talk,” Mitchell told them, “is fear.”

•  •  •  

As the CIA officers listened to Mitchell expound on the benefits of aggressive tactics in interrogation, a classified report that would have shown him up as a fool lay buried deep within the bowels of their own headquarters.

Decades before, agency psychologists and interrogation specialists had conducted extensive research on successful interview techniques, publishing the findings in a 1958 classified report. The study reached two unequivocal conclusions: Interrogators who cultivated relationships with captives got results, while those who threatened and bullied got nowhere.

“Maltreating the subject is, from a strictly practical point of view, as shortsighted as whipping a horse to his knees before a thirty mile ride,” the report said. “It is true that most anyone will talk when subjected to enough physical pressures, but the information obtained in this way is likely to be of little intelligence value.”

Even the theory at the heart of the argument in favor of rough treatment—that it would eventually push the interview subject into confessing to the lies he had previously spun during less aggressive questioning—was wrong, the study found. Instead, subjects had to be gently guided into a tacit, yet unspoken, acknowledgment of their deceit, sparing them the indignity of having to admit it.

“Showing some subjects up as liars is the very worst thing to do, because their determination not to lose face will only make them stick harder to the lie,” the report said. “For these, it is necessary to provide loopholes by asking questions which let them correct their stories without any direct admission of lying.”

The approach, the study said, was somewhat different from that used by law enforcement, because the focus of an agency interrogator should be on what persuaded a subject to talk, rather than on whether the information could be used as evidence in a court. But the technique used by the FBI of establishing a relationship was the best for CIA interrogations, too.

“An interrogation yields the highest intelligence dividend when the interrogee finally becomes an ally,” the report said.

That was what the best minds of the CIA urged. But their report was languishing in a forgotten corner of the agency’s headquarters. Elsewhere in the building, a psychologist who didn’t know what he was talking about was clamoring for the approach that the experts had long ago concluded was worse than worthless. And the officials listening to his breezy assurances were eager to get going on Mitchell’s advice.

•  •  •  

The London bureau for Al Jazeera overlooks the Albert Embankment on the south side of the Thames, directly across the river from the headquarters of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service.

On an early April morning, Yosri Fouda, a reporter with the Arab television network, had just arrived at the office when his cell phone rang. The line crackled.

“
Salaam-u-alaikum,
Brother Yosri,” a man said. “I am someone who means well.”

The caller hadn’t given his name, and Fouda didn’t recognize his voice. But the man sounded friendly and was apparently devout—the first words he had spoken were an Islamic greeting.

“I hope you are thinking of preparing something special for the first anniversary,” the man said. “Because if you are, we can provide you with some exclusive stuff.”

The first anniversary.
It was still a long way off, but was this man talking about 9/11?

The caller asked Fouda for a secure fax number and, as soon as the reporter gave him one, hung up.

•  •  •  

A three-page fax arrived a few days later. It was an outline for a three-part documentary about the 9/11 attacks, complete with instructions on where to do the filming, whom to contact, and what to say. Fouda could scarcely believe the arrogance of this anonymous author in assuming that he could dictate the content and structure of a report by a global news organization.

Uncertain how to proceed, Fouda took the fax home with him that night so he could reread it. After he arrived, his cell phone rang again. The mysterious man was calling back.

“Would you like to come to Islamabad?” he asked. “We will make sure that you are, God willing, fine and that you get what you want.”

A religious man, apparently with detailed knowledge about 9/11, wanted him in Pakistan so he could be given information. Fouda wasn’t sure where this was going, but he smelled a scoop.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “As soon as I can get a visa, you will find me, God willing, at your end.”

•  •  •  

He had arrived on the first flight of detainees brought to Guantanamo and had been assigned Internment Serial Number 9, abbreviated in the center’s documents as ISN 009. The official list of captives’ names identified him as Himdy Yasser, but no such person existed at Guantanamo. Instead, he was Yaser Hamdi, a name mangled during sloppy processing.

The Americans had picked him up with dozens of other men, including John Walker Lindh, at Qala-i-Jangi following the uprising in the compound. Like Lindh, he stood apart from the others. He was American. But unlike Lindh—who had been brought to the United States and indicted on felony charges—Hamdi was locked up at Guantanamo.

When he told his interrogators he had been born in Louisiana, they didn’t believe him, though his English was flawless. And because he had lived in Saudi Arabia since he was a toddler, even he didn’t realize that his birth in Baton Rouge made him an American citizen. In early April, someone checked his story and found his birth certificate. Hamdi had been telling the truth.

•  •  •  

The news rocketed to Jim Haynes at the Pentagon. He could scarcely believe it—
another
American had been fighting alongside the Taliban. What was this?

Haynes alerted Rumsfeld, who seemed flummoxed about what to do.

“I recommend that we bring this guy into the United States,” Haynes said. “We’ve already been through this with John Walker Lindh. We need to be consistent.”

The situation also posed a potential legal threat to Guantanamo, he said. A court was far more likely to extend its reach to the detention center in Cuba if an American citizen was there. Moving Hamdi out would solve the problem.

Rumsfeld agreed. Officials at Guantanamo received the order and hurried Hamdi from his cell. Taking Hamdi back to the United States required some care. If he was going to be handed over to the Justice Department, he shouldn’t
travel by military transport, Washington officials decided. Instead, he was loaded onto a jet that belonged to the FBI.

•  •  •  

Haynes’s deputy, Whit Cobb, called John Yoo to alert him to the news.

“You won’t believe this,” Cobb said. “Looks like we found an American citizen among the people at Guantanamo.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” You replied. “How’d that happen?”

“It appears he was born in the U.S., then left as an infant for Saudi Arabia. So he’s a citizen.”

Not good news. “This guy
has
to be brought back to the United States,” Yoo said. “We can’t have him at Guantanamo Bay.”

•  •  •  

While Hamdi was in transit, administration lawyers rushed to an emergency meeting in Gonzales’s office. Not all of them bought Haynes’s argument that this detainee should be allowed on American soil, citizen or not. Maybe, some thought, the plane should be diverted before it had a chance to land.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Addington said.

“The decision’s already been made by the secretary of defense,” Haynes replied.

Flanigan broke in. “It could cause some real problems,” he said. “It’s going to completely shut off the military commission process.”

Instead, Addington said, bringing Hamdi to the United States would put a possible habeas corpus case on a fast track. Then some judge somewhere could order the administration to produce Hamdi and potentially reveal evidence that the administration had against him.

Haynes strongly disagreed. “He is a U.S. citizen,” he said. “We
have
to bring him back to the United States.”

Anger flashed across Addington’s face. “This should have been more carefully vetted,” he said. “This is a decision that’s going to have far-reaching consequences.”

They needed to limit the potential damage, Addington said. If Hamdi was going to be brought to the country, then the administration had to make sure he wasn’t taken to a region covered by a federal circuit that might be unfriendly to the government. The best choice, the lawyers agreed, was the Fourth Circuit. The appeals court there was conservative and most likely to lean toward the administration’s argument.

The instructions went out. The plane carrying Hamdi was ordered to fly to Norfolk, Virginia, inside the Fourth Circuit.

•  •  •  

The afternoon of April 5 was brisk but sunny when the FBI plane from Guantanamo landed at Chambers Field in the Norfolk Naval Station. At 2:15, a green minivan with tinted windows pulled beside it. Soldiers walked Hamdi, chained and blinded by black goggles, off the plane and into the van. It drove down Hampton Boulevard toward the base’s brig. It would be his home for much of the next three years.

•  •  •  

That same evening at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tony Blair sat down at a dining table, his back to three off-white bookcases stuffed with historical works and autobiographies.

It was the first day of the two leaders’ summit to discuss the Middle East. Until a week ago, Iraq had been the front-burner topic. Then world events interceded. The Israeli Defense Forces had launched a military operation in the West Bank, the largest since the Six-Day War in 1967. The action, called Operation Defensive Shield, followed a series of attacks against Israel carried out by Palestinian armed groups, part of the uprising known as the Second Intifada. The fighting had intensified three days earlier, with an Israeli siege at Jenin, a Palestinian refugee camp, followed by a ferocious counterattack.

As they dined, Bush and Blair discussed the rapidly deteriorating situation. Any hopes for advancing the Middle East peace process were now dashed. And this was not an isolated issue, Blair said. He repeated the message he had delivered to Cheney weeks before—the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians had to be part of the strategy for Iraq.

“These are not divisible problems,” he said. “It is one problem with different facets, and this Israel-Palestine conflict is an important one of them. Resolution of that would have an enormously beneficial impact with the Muslim world.”

“I understand your position, Tony,” Bush replied. “But I don’t believe we can wait for one problem to be solved before we address the other.”