500 Days (93 page)

191
–
192
: Seligman’s background is described in Rob Hirtz, “Martin Seligman’s Journey,”
Pennsylvania Gazette,
January/February 1999. The meeting at his house was first described by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, “In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry into Past Use,”
New York Times,
April 22, 2009.

192
: Information about the SERE program from Department of the Army, “Code of Conduct, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Training,” Army Regulation 350-30, December 10, 1985; U.S. Air Force, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Air Force Survival School,” undated; Armed Services Report; and July 25, 2002, memorandum from the JPRA chief of staff for the Office of Defense General Counsel, “Subject: Exploitation.” Also see January 15, 2003, memo from John F. Rankin and Christopher Ross to the officer in charge, FASOTRAGULANT (Fleet Aviation Specialized Operational Training Group Atlantic), “Subj: After Action Report Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay (JTF-GTMO) Training Evolution” (
Rankin Ross memo
). Some of the details of the discussions to apply the techniques in Guantanamo from “JTF GITMO SERE Interrogation SOP,” December 10, 2002; also see December 17, 2002, memo from Timothy James to JTF-GTMO/J2.

193
: The earliest days of Mitchell and Jessen’s involvement in the interrogation program, and the role and details of SERE training, from “Report of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate: Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” November 20, 2008 (
Armed Services Report
); Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General, “Special Review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001–October 2003),” May 7, 2004 (
CIA Interrogation Report
); February 28, 2002, memo for Colonel Cooney, “Prisoner Handling Recommendations”; and September 24, 2007, testimony of Joseph Witsch before the Senate Committee on Armed Services in “Hearing to Receive Information Relating to the Treatment of Detainees.” Also see Jim L. Cox, “Complaint: Dr. James Elmer Mitchell (License No. 23564),” submitted to the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, 2007 (
Cox complaint
); and June 6, 2007, letter from Stephen Soldz et al. to Sharon Brehm, Ph.D., President, American Psychological Association (
Brehm letter
).

193
: The lack of knowledge of Mitchell and Jessen on the subject of interrogation from the CIA Interrogation Report. Also see Cox complaint and Brehm letter.

193
–
194
: The history of the Manchester Manual from the Behavioral Analysis Program, Operational Training Unit, Counterintelligence Division, FBI Headquarters, “Terrorist Training Manual,” undated; Jason Lewis, “Lessons in Jihad as Secret Terror Manual Translated by MI5 Is Made Public by America,”
Daily Mail,
March 15, 2008; and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence—Threats, “A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century,” August 2003.

194
–
195
:
Despite both public statements and court filings by the governments of the United States and Britain describing the Manchester Manual as an al-Qaeda document, it is not. Indeed, even a cursory reading makes that clear.
   This is an enormously important fact. The Manchester Manual was at the center of some of the most sweeping and controversial decisions by the Bush administration. When detainees at Guantanamo launched hunger strikes and accusations of abuse, the Defense Department dismissed the actions and allegations as the false representations called for in the instructions of the manual, including directions that Islamists should falsely claim to have been tortured whenever they go to court. (No instructions to engage in such a deception exist in the document; I will explain below.)
   Also, as the section in the main book text makes clear, the Manchester Manual was used to construct a psychological profile and analysis by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The Defense Department wanted to use the document to assess “resistance strategies” employed by al-Qaeda members. But not only was the document unrelated to al-Qaeda; its “resistance measures” were irrelevant to anything either the Pentagon or Mitchell was looking for.
   In other words, this mislabeling of the Manchester Manual as an al-Qaeda document was an error of massive proportions that fed false information about bin Laden’s group to intelligence and law enforcement agencies in both the United States and Britain. Indeed, had someone analyzed the document correctly, at least some of the detainee abuse problems that occurred in the Bush administration could have been avoided.
   Because I am contradicting the accepted version of this story, I will describe in detail both the evidence and the process that led to my conclusion that this document was not used by al-Qaeda. At one point early in my reporting, I was speaking with a foreign official and mentioned the Manchester Manual as an “al-Qaeda training manual.” The official smiled at me and asked, “Have you ever read it?” I had to admit I had not—until then, I had relied solely on the representations in court documents and published reports. He suggested that I take the time to review it myself.
   I did, and was astounded. Very quickly, it became obvious there were problems with the official representation; even a cursory reading made it clear that the Manchester Manual could not be an al-Qaeda document. Once I reached that conclusion, I spoke to two officials with a Middle Eastern intelligence service. Both agreed that their government had long known that the manual was not an al-Qaeda document, despite the representations of the American and British governments. One of the men called the idea that it had anything to do with al-Qaeda “absurd.”
   The evidence is overwhelming.
   Starting with the basics: At no point does the manual mention al-Qaeda or bin Laden. It is not in digital format; instead, it was handwritten by at least two different people. Many have made the mistake of assuming it was written on a computer because the government translation came off a word processor; however, the Arabic version did not. The version found by the Manchester police on a computer was composed of digital scans of the original document.
   That is important for several reasons. If this document was written in the middle to late 1990s (a best-case scenario, given that it was found in 2000) and was meant for widespread distribution, why was it not in a format that allowed for easy delivery? If the document was scanned at the time of its writing, someone must have had a computer. Yet it was not written on a computer.
   This is part of why both the Middle Eastern intelligence service and I reached the same conclusion: that this document was written long before 2000.
   
Of course, those details about the format and structure of the document are merely suggestive. The information contained in the record is conclusive: The document was written between October 1990 and 1993. Those dates are critically important, as I’ll explain below.

The evidence about the lack of connection between the Manchester Manual and al-Qaeda can be broken into numerous categories:

1.
Date of writing:
As I mentioned above, this document was written, at the latest, in the early 1990s. During that time period, al-Qaeda was just getting started and was flush with cash. was flush with cashwas flush with cashwas flush with cashwas flush with cash
   Some of the proof about the date that the Manchester Manual was written comes from its references to technology. Digital cameras, cell phones, the Internet—none of these were in common usage at the time the document was written.
   Affordable digital cameras were widely available by 1994; the first mass-market version, the Apple QuickTake 100, manufactured by Kodak, could be purchased for less than $800. At that same time Fuji, Kodak, and Nikon all offered digital cameras for sale. By the following year, 1995, Canon introduced its Sure Shot 60 Zoom, which could be purchased for about $80.
   Why does that matter? Because only film cameras were available at the time the Manchester Manual was written.
   Whenever surveillance photographs are taken, the document says “the photographer should be experienced with film processing and developing.” The reason, it says, is that the film cannot be taken to an outside film-processing service.
   Of course, many of the terrorists might be using film cameras. However, while the document is comprehensive in its description of how to use technologies, there is no mention and no description of digital cameras—where the photographs should be stored, whether they can be shipped online, etc. And, of course, there would be no need for all of the photographers to be proficient in film development unless they needed to develop film.
   Next, the document lays out specific details for how members of this group should communicate with each other. But it includes no instructions on the use of e-mail, which had become a popular means of communication by al-Qaeda in 1995. Mass-market e-mail services first became available in 1992, and exploded in usage the following year.
   More important is that the document describes a fax machine as a “modern” device. That technology was in wide usage by the mid-1980s, and by the mid-1990s, as Internet usage was booming, was hardly considered “modern.”
   Then, phone booths. The Manchester Manual lays out instructions on how to use phone booths to escape detection when a member of the organization fears that his home line is tapped. The very description is, at least for the modern technological age, ancient history. There is no mention of cellular phones, which did not come into wide usage until the late 1990s.
   Historical references in the document make it clear that it was written sometime after October 1990. In a section giving descriptions of previous assassination attempts—both successful and unsuccessful—it mentions the terrorist killing of Rifaat El-Mahgoub, the speaker of the Egyptian parliament, who was murdered on October 12 of that year.
   All of these factors combined show that the document could have been written only between late 1990 and sometime in the middle of that decade. There is, however, another piece of data that the Middle Eastern intelligence agency officials I spoke with say has led to their conclusion that the manual was written no later than August 1993.
   The document mentions every assassination attempt of an Egyptian interior minister from 1987 through 1990. However, another took place in August 1993, in the
unsuccessful attempt to kill Hassan al-Alfi. The intelligence officials’ analysis is that, if written in 1994 or later, the document would not have ignored the most recent attempt on an Egyptian interior minister while exploring the earlier attempts in such detail.
   All of that information—plus an estimate on the length of time it took to handwrite the almost two-hundred-page document—has led the foreign intelligence group to conclude that the manual was written in either 1991 or 1992. Those are the only dates that would account for both the timing of the 1990 assassination and the descriptions of the existing technology.

2.
The time line and al-Qaeda:
By the time of the October 1990 assassination of El-Mahgoub, al-Qaeda was in a shambles. Bin Laden had been in Saudi Arabia for months; while he still had his Arab fighters in numerous locations, most of his time was spent fomenting discord in Yemen, much to the dismay of the Saudi royal family. His relationship with Zawahiri and the Egyptians had unraveled, as each pursued different goals—a critical piece of information in the later analysis of the document.
   Then, in April 1991, bin Laden moved to the Sudan and began reconstituting al-Qaeda. He was flush with cash, paying millions to help support the government there and to finance training camps. He remained wealthy until March 5, 1994, when he was cut off by his family. Again, the dates when he had wealth will be important in this analysis, as will be obvious below.

3.
The abilities of the group that composed the Manchester Manual:
Unlike al-Qaeda, the group that used the document had limited ability to obtain basic equipment that bin Laden had used for years, according to intelligence sources.
   The evidence is again in the text of the document, when it refers to fax machines. Those would be unlikely to be used, the document says, because of the group’s limitations. “Considering its modest capabilities and the pursuit by the security apparatus of its members and forces, the Islamic Military Organization cannot obtain these devices.”
   I do not have the original document, but an Arabic translator I consulted said that the term
capabilities
used behind the word
modest
is probably an English approximation. Most likely, the translator said, the correct translation would be more akin to
limited means,
a reference to financial condition. Of course, that translation cannot be offered as anything other than a probability, but even in English, it seems to be the most likely meaning. However, if the Arabic words are about a lack of an operational ability to obtain the technology, that would not change the fact that this is a description of a group that was different from al-Qaeda at that time. And again, al-Qaeda had fax machines by the time bin Laden traveled to the Sudan
   There is one other indication that the group that wrote the manual was financially strapped: The document cautions that special operations (it specifies assassinations, kidnapping, bombings, and others) pose the risk of draining the group financially. This would not have been a challenge facing al-Qaeda before March 2004, long after the Manchester Manual appears to have been written. In other words, al-Qaeda was rich; the group that wrote the Manchester Manual was poor.

4.
The operations of the organization:
This is the most decisive evidence in establishing that the Manchester Manual has nothing to do with al-Qaeda: Not only does the operation of the group differ dramatically from that of al-Qaeda; it in fact does the
opposite
of what bin Laden called for in his organization.
   Start with training. From its beginning, al-Qaeda maintained training camps, financed by bin Laden. Indeed, there were separate camps, some for early recruits and others for more advanced members. Nothing like this existed for the group that wrote the Manchester Manual. In fact, their training was conducted in places selected by lower-level individual trainers.
   
The Manchester Manual instructs individuals to set up their training facilities away from police stations and public establishments. (This was not a requirement for al-Qaeda camps; in Afghanistan, one was just off the main airport at Kabul. In the Sudan, no attempt was made to hide them from the police or government officials, whose operations were financed by bin Laden.) They are told that no one but the trainers and the trainees should know the location of the place, and that it should be suitable for the kind of training being provided. This also differs from al-Qaeda—with that group, individual trainers don’t get to decide the methods of training. Instead, those techniques are established by a military council. Finally, the document says that all signs of training should be hidden once the lessons are completed. Al-Qaeda never made any serious attempt to hide its facilities; that is why they were so easy for the Americans to bomb.
   The organization of the group that wrote the Manchester Manual also differs from al-Qaeda. There is no mention of the various committees that run bin Laden’s network. Instead of a military committee of al-Qaeda, the entire group in the Manchester Manual is called the “military organization,” which is run by commanders and an advisory council, a much looser structure.
   The document also lists the requirements for someone to become a member of the organization. While they are similar to those listed in al-Qaeda’s founding documents from 1988, they are not the same. There are no requirements that the member be recommended by a trusted aide, that he follow the rules without question, or that he has to be well mannered, as was contained in the original declarations prepared for al-Qaeda in 1988.