The Way of the Knife (42 page)

Nek Muhammad Wazir led a rebellion in Pakistan’s tribal areas where his militia fighters fought Pakistan’s army to a standstill. At the Shakai tribal meeting in 2004 (pictured), Nek Muhammad (foreground) and a Pakistani general agreed to a truce. But Nek Muhammad did not honor the ceasefire, and Pakistani officials were so furious that they gave the CIA their blessing to hunt him down. He was the first person killed in Pakistan by a CIA Predator.

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (right) took over Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in 2004. He was close to President Musharraf and eventually became the country’s top military officer, making him the most powerful man in Pakistan. Lt. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha (left) took over the ISI in 2008.

As the founder of Blackwater USA, Erik Prince became indispensible to a CIA that was straining to meet the demands of multiple wars. Blackwater guards protected CIA officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Prince himself was hired by the spy agency for an assassination program developed after the September 11 attacks.

For several months in 2006, Art Keller was stationed at two CIA bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas where he had a fraught relationship with the ISI.

Michael Furlong was part of the Pentagon’s expansion of “information operations;” he helped develop video games designed to influence opinions in the Middle East and allow the military to collect intelligence about the game players. He was the Pentagon official overseeing Dewey Clarridge’s private spying operation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, a once obscure militia calling itself al Shabaab (“The Youth”) grew in strength and eventually took control of Mogadishu. Shabaab fighters, pictured here in 2008, enforced strict sharia law in the capital.

Michele “Amira” Ballarin, an heiress and onetime congressional candidate living in Virginia horse country, became obsessed with Somalia and made frequent trips to the Horn of Africa. In 2008, the Pentagon hired her to gather intelligence inside Somalia, and she eventually inserted herself into the middle of ransom negotiations between Somali pirates and merchant ship owners.

A large American delegation, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (right), flew to Saudi Arabia in June 2012 for a memorial service after the death of Saudi crown prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz. Saudi officials have been close partners with the Obama administration throughout the American war in Yemen. John Brennan, President Obama’s senior counterterrorism adviser and a former CIA station chief in Riyadh, is pictured over Panetta’s left shoulder. Brennan was one of the architects of the Obama administration’s secret war in Yemen, and in 2013 Obama tapped him to run the CIA.

When Panetta was CIA director, he clashed often with Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (to Panetta’s left), who warned that the Obama administration had become too enamored with the CIA and covert action. Blair was pushed out of the job after fifteen months.

Ibrahim al-Asiri, the master bomb maker for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Asiri built a bomb that was surgically implanted in his brother, who blew himself up attempting to kill a senior Saudi official. Later, Asiri constructed a bomb that was sewn into the underwear of a young Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a jetliner as it descended into Detroit.

Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, shot and killed two men he believed were trying to rob him at a crowded traffic circle in Lahore, Pakistan. Davis sat in prison for weeks as American officials denied to Pakistan’s government that Davis worked for the CIA. For Pakistani officials, the Davis case proved that the CIA had deployed a large cadre of spies inside Pakistan without the ISI’s knowledge.