How to Break a Terrorist (18 page)

L
ATER THAT DAY,
I sit down with Tom and Mary for a strategy session. I am amazed at the difference. Instead of scoffing at what I’ve got to say, Mary listens quietly and appears to internalize what I say. “Look, Abu Haydar is a man who needs his ego constantly stroked. Do it in subtle ways, and he will respond.”

“How?” Mary asks.

“Small compliments. Make him feel important. Build up respect; don’t try to attack him.”

“Okay,” Tom says.

As for Lenny, I can’t get him off Abu Haydar at night. I have no control over the night shift, and Roger’s already ruled against me on that. Whenever we pass in the halls, he doesn’t even acknowledge me. I do the same. I cannot respect a man who is willing to sell out his mission to settle a personal score.

Over the next four interrogations, Abu Haydar refuses to
give Lenny anything. With Tom and Mary, it is a different story. Little by little, he shares enticing tidbits of information.

But he doesn’t move us up the ladder. By day four, little progress has been made. I wish I could do these interrogations myself, but that will never happen. I must work in the background.

I’ve got to get him moving again. That night, I walk back to the cellblock and ask the guard to let me into Abu Haydar’s cell. I find him resting on a mat placed atop a concrete slab that serves as his bed.

The guard steps outside but remains close. I cannot tip my hand to him. Not now.

“Dr. Matthew, how are you doing?”

“I am fine. I have just returned from Washington.”

“And what did you learn?” He no longer acts. We are coconspirators now.

I whisper into his ear, “I’ve talked with my bosses. Most of them think that you are a good candidate to join the program. So far, though, a decision has not been made.”

He looks disappointed.

“How close am I?”

I pretend to consider this. Finally, I tell him, “I would say you are at about forty percent.”

He stifles a gasp. Now, he’s worried. “Only forty?”

“If you help us, then I think you will get approved.”

“Okay. I will.” He nods valiantly, but his face is still a picture of concern.

I put a hand on his shoulder, “Abu Haydar, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

He smiles back at me, but I can see the
Casablanca
reference is lost on him.

The next day, Mary and Tom sit down with him. I watch from the Hollywood room. Abu Haydar tells them, “I have a friend. He is an imam and he is my friend and mentor.”

Tom appears excited. “Who is this friend?”

Abu Haydar ignores the question. “We have been best friends for most of our lives. We have studied Islam together for fourteen years.”

Then he drops a bomb, “He knows many things.”

Mary and Tom try to get him to define that, but he won’t.

After they go in circles for awhile again, Mary asks him, “What is your friend’s name.”

He will not answer. Instead he tells Tom, “You know, I am very bored in my cell.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I wonder if it might be possible to get a book to read.”

Tom hedges, “I will look into it. What sort of book would you like?”

“I am very fond of Harry Potter.”

From the Hollywood room, I can’t help but break out laughing. Imagine if J. K. Rowling knew that one of Iraq’s master terrorists was a fan of her work. I later approve this incentive, and Tom finds a copy of a Harry Potter book in the compound. It is delivered to his cell.

The impasse continues for almost two weeks. What has he told us? Is his friend higher or lower on the ladder? Toward the end of the third week, I visit him again in his cell. This time, I find him engrossed in
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
. He’s reading it a second time.

We need him to give up al Masri. But he deflects every question with vague answers. “Last I heard, he was in Ramadi,” was his last answer as to the whereabouts of Al Qaida’s master bomber.

“Hello, my friend,” I say as I enter his cell. This is my third visit here. The last time I sat down with him, I told him he was at sixty percent.

“Dr. Matthew, thank you for coming to see me.”

“My pleasure. How is the book?”

“Oh, very good. I love Harry Potter. These books are so imaginative.”

“I like them too. That one’s my favorite,” I reply.

He looks ready to discuss the book with me, but I haven’t actually read it so I hurry to change the subject, whispering so the guard won’t hear. “I want you to know that I have some good news.”

“Really? Please share it.”

“You’re doing great work. I’ve got everyone on board except the chief of our agency. The others have signed off on you joining our program.”

“That is excellent news. How close am I?”

“You’re at ninety percent. We just need one more push to bring you to a hundred percent, and then my boss will be convinced that you can be trusted.”

He thinks this over. Finally, he whispers into my ear, “Dr. Matthew, later today I will give you something that will change his mind.”

“I hope so.” He takes my hand and squeezes it in a friendly gesture. As I get up to leave, I tell him, “You know, Abu Haydar, I want to you play a role in the future of Iraq.”

“Thank you, Dr. Matthew. Just wait. Just wait.”

MAY
15, 2006

M
Y FRIEND IS
Sheikh Abu ’Abd al Rahman. His mosque is the one in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad.”

Tom and Mary look on quietly. Abu Haydar’s started talking.

“He is Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s personal spiritual advisor.”

In the Hollywood room, my pen falls out of my hand.

Abu Haydar is not finished, “If you want Zarqawi, watch al Rahman.”

He’s just given us our first direct lead to Zarqawi.

“What should we watch for?” asks Mary.

“Look for him to drive in a white sedan. If he stops and changes cars, and that car is a blue sedan, he is on his way to see Zarqawi. He will switch cars in the middle of his trip.”

In the ’gator pit, Abu Haydar’s information ignites a flurry of activity. Randy’s already passed it up to the task force com
mander. We send all available assets to the Mansur Mosque. In the meantime, more assets are mobilized for the chase.

We get our first break when we identify al Rahman leaving the mosque. After that, he goes nowhere without American eyes watching.

At first, nothing happens. Days pass. We wait and watch. On May 31, I walk into the ’gator pit and see everyone clustered around computer monitors and the flat-screen television.

“What’s going on?” I ask Steve.

He leans over and whispers, “This is a live feed from a surveillance asset. We’re watching al Rahman. He just switched cars to a blue sedan.”

This is our moment. I’m captivated by the street scene on the monitors. The blue sedan stair-steps around Baghdad. The asset follows it through all its maneuvers.

The blue sedan makes another sudden turn. It drives behind a tall building and disappears.

“No! NO!” somebody moans.

The camera pans up and down the street. No sign of the car. The asset flies around the building, camera panning this way and that. Nothing. The blue sedan has simply vanished. Along with it went our best shot yet of capturing Zarqawi.

Randy sinks into his desk and utters a curse. He leaves for home in just a few days. Edith, the analyst who doesn’t believe Al Qaida operatives maintain their family ties, is scheduled to take over his role. He looks absolutely devastated. He’s devoted the better part of three years to this pursuit, and to come this close and miss must be like a knife to the gut.

At least, that’s what it feels like to me.

T
HE ASSETS PICK UP
al Rahman again at his mosque a week later. He can’t even go to the bathroom now without being watched. Every house he visits, every location he drives to in his white sedan is noted. If we get another opportunity, nobody in Zarqawi’s inner circle will be safe.

This morning Cliff comes running into the ’gator pit. “They’ve got the blue car again!”

We switch to the live feed from the surveillance asset. The blue car weaves through Baghdad traffic. At one point it stops at a house, but al Rahman does not get out. Our SF teams are on a hair trigger. The moment they get the order and location, the helicopters will be off and racing.

The blue sedan starts moving again. The driver negotiates northeast Baghdad—a heavily Shia area. Then he continues outside the city limits.

“Which way is he going?” somebody asks. We all shrug. It’s impossible to tell from the feed.

Cliff stands next to me, “Damn, Matt. I hope we get him this time.”

I say nothing. I’m superstitious. I just wish Randy were here, but he’s already left.

The car drives down a highway for almost forty minutes. It turns off the road into a small neighborhood and pulls up to a house. A man comes out of the house and switches with the driver, but al Rahman doesn’t get out of the car.

“I guess Racer X is driving now,” Steve says.

The car pulls out of the driveway and returns to the highway. Finally, it turns onto a minor road and then pulls up to a farmhouse. A few outbuildings are scattered around the property.

Al Rahman opens the passenger door and climbs out of the sedan. He walks inside the house, trailed by his driver.

Somebody shouts, “They’re en route!” They needn’t have bothered. The helicopters buzz our hangar as they fly overhead toward the most important target of the Iraq War.

This is our moment. We could change history, ending the reign of terror of one of the most prolific mass murderers of our time. I can’t even move. None of us can.

The helicopters disappear into the distance. Their beating blades grow faint, then quiet.

I hear somebody ask, “How long ’til they get there?”

“I don’t know. That car drove a long way.”

The surveillance asset stays focused on the house.

“I wonder if Zarqawi’s in the house,” Cliff says.

“He’s there,” I whisper to myself.

Ten minutes pass. No sign of the helicopters. The ’gator
pit’s mood changes from expectant to anxious. Are we going to miss him again?

Suddenly, the screen grows dark. There’s a collective gasp in the pit. A towering column of smoke and debris erupts over the house. Everyone erupts in spontaneous applause.

My God.

Before the smoke can clear, another explosion tears through the remains of the house.

Cliff runs to make a phone call. The feed ends. We all look around at each other.
Is it over? Did we get him?

Minutes drag by while we’re left in suspense. Finally, an officer walks into the pit.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him. Abu Musab al Zarqawi is dead.”

FALL
2006

T
HE OCEAN LOOKS
sweet today, with perfect rollers that break fifty yards from shore. The sun-burnished beach stretches for miles in each direction. I am home, which for me is on my surfboard and where the waves are.

This is my time. I’ve lived a nomadic, sometimes fierce existence in the service of my country. I have rarely had a place to call my own, so I return to these shores after every deployment to find solace. My mind clears, and I can make sense of all the things that have happened to me since my last visit.

After my time in Iraq there is much I need to consider. I step into the froth at the edge of the waterline. A few splashes, and I’m waist deep in the balmy ocean. I study the way the waves are breaking. I’m alone on this beach. The weekend families, the bikini-clad women are hours from taking up space on the sand.

I suppose everyone who returns from Iraq must carry their own personal demons. Mine have haunted me since the day Zarqawi died in our air strike.

The strike team reached the house less than a dozen minutes after the bombs reduced it to smoking rubble. As the Special Forces jumped from the helicopters, two Iraqis emerged from the wreckage carrying a stretcher between them. Zarqawi lay on top of it, and when he saw American soldiers approaching, he tried to roll off the stretcher and get away, even as he coughed up blood. A soldier grabbed him and held him in place. As more blood poured from his mouth into the sand around him, his lungs collapsed. He looked up into his enemy’s eyes and died.

The strike team brought his corpse to the compound along with al Rahman’s. Abu Haydar had pleaded with Mary and Tom to keep al Rahman, his closest friend, safe. He died in the blast, and they later told Abu Haydar. His reaction was the same as Abu Ali’s—total emotional collapse.

I saw Zarqawi’s body later that day. He lay on the floor at my feet, looking remarkably intact. The bombs had collapsed his lungs, but he had no external injuries save a few cuts.

Not long after that, the entire interrogations unit was called into the conference room for a briefing from a senior colonel and his deputy, a major. They were high-level intelligence officers for the command, but I’d only seen them a couple of times before, during VIP visits. The colonel addressed us with a backhanded compliment, “You all did great work here,” he told us, “even though this came down to just a few interrogators.” I wasn’t sure what he meant or who he meant, until I learned that Mary, Lenny, Tom, and Cliff were subsequently called into the commanding general’s office
and awarded medals. Lenny, as the only military person, was given a Bronze Star. Finally, a lightbulb went on in my head. I finally knew who tied Randy’s hands and why Roger wouldn’t discipline Lenny. Most likely this colonel and major called those shots.

The next day, as I walked past Mary in the ’gator pit, she called me over to her desk. “Does this girl look like al Masri?” she asked me.

She held a photo of a dead child—a girl. Her crushed head lay amid the rubble of the house. I looked away, ashamed and horrified. Two children had died in the bombing. Nobody knew who they were.

For me it doesn’t matter. I own a part of their deaths and I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life.

The sun is low on the eastern horizon. The water ahead is glittering gold from its reflection. I step into deeper water. The smaller swells bulge across me on their way to the waterline. I slip onto my board and start to paddle.

Killing Zarqawi dealt a blow to Al Qaida in Iraq but it didn’t end the suicide bombings. The news still holds tales of horrified shoppers struggling from the wreckage of once-thriving Baghdad marketplaces. We didn’t save the day as our leadership hoped we might.

But an organization can only take so much damage. In the wake of Zarqawi’s death, we launched sudden strikes all over Baghdad, Yusufiyah, and Anbar Province. Our intelligence brought down dozens of cells and networks. Suicide bombings plummeted for a month. I would like to think that with Zarqawi’s death, we helped make Iraq a little safer, even if only for a little while. We brought justice and we saved lives. Over a year later, General Petraeus reached out to
Sunni nationalists and armed them, finally delivering on my promise to Abu Haydar to work together and forget the past, and many Sunnis have in fact turned on Al Qaida. Perhaps an ultimate showdown between Shia and Sunni still looms on the horizon, but with negotiation and understanding, the Iraqi people might someday learn to live together again.

In the meantime, the hydra still lives. Al Masri took over for Zarqawi, and nothing changed in the compound but the target. I left the compound not long afterward to work with a Stryker brigade combat team in the north of Iraq along with Mike, one of the agents I had deployed with. We took part in raids, interrogated detainees at the point of capture, and expanded on the new methods. I carried an M4 and strapped on my Kevlar every night as we left the wire. I felt free out there with the soldiers, far from the politics of our ’gator unit, and I felt that we were making a difference. But it was never as gratifying as that one day in June when I played a role in the death of the most wanted man in Iraq.

I find the sweet spot in the swells. I swing my board around and start paddling hard. The next wave rushes toward me, taking shape in the otherwise amorphous ocean. I watch it over my shoulder, timing my next move. The base takes shape. It starts to curl.

In a heartbeat, I’m on my feet, the board aligned below. Then I’m shooting down the face of the wave as the curl breaks behind me. It is a glorious moment full of translucent sunshine and the perfume of salt water.

The ride ends, and I start paddling for the next wave. I am free again, and one day I will make sense of it all and feel whole.

I think back to those meetings in Abu Haydar’s cell.
Those moments crystallized for me the importance of our new techniques. They give us flexibility, insight, and information. Those are the real weapons in the War on Terror. We don’t have to become our enemies to defeat them.

I see Abu Haydar again. He leans into me as I speak into his ear, the guard nearby oblivious to our secret deal. And therein lies the most important truth of this new age of warfare. A few words, furtive and whispered, can change the world.