The Three Battles of Wanat

by Mark Bowden

  Abu Raja, meanwhile, was a wreck. After weeks of grilling, he had given up all that he could give, he complained, but the gators kept after him day and night. One day, Doc sat in on his questioning. Watching an earlier interrogation, he had noticed that Abu Raja had slipped. Going over a story he had told many times before, Abu Raja mentioned for the first time that Abu Haydr had sometimes met alone with Abu Raja’s boss.

  This was different, and odd. Why, Doc now asked, would Abu Haydr, Abu Raja’s subordinate, a man who had been called in just to operate a video camera, be meeting separately with Abu Raja’s boss? The detainee had no convincing explanation for it, and it left Doc with a hunch: What if Abu Raja had been lying about the other man’s status all along? Why would he do that? Was he frightened of Abu Haydr? Protecting him? It forced a fresh look at the older prisoner, who was more impressive than Abu Raja anyway. What if he had been Abu Raja’s superior in the organization? That would mean Abu Haydr was even more important than they had suspected. The problem was that Mary and Lenny were stymied, and the team had all but given up on getting information from Abu Haydr. He had made a final statement, had been issued new clothes, and was on the list for transport back to Abu Ghraib.

  With Abu Haydr just hours away from being shipped out, Doc asked for and received permission to speak to him one more time. He knew Abu Haydr dreaded going back to Abu Ghraib, and he had an idea for how to get him talking.

  5. Breaking Abu Haydr

  The two men—the big Iraqi and the intense blond gator—talked for five hours in the interrogation room; because Doc was a supervisor himself, their conversation was not monitored. They talked about children and football and wrestling.

  “I was a great wrestler,” Abu Haydr announced.

  “You look like one,” Doc told him.

  In his weeks of watching, the American had noted Abu Haydr’s habitual braggadocio. The Iraqi constantly trumpeted his skills—the black belt in karate, advanced knowledge of the Koran, expertise in logic and persuasion— like a man determined to prove his importance and worth. He spoke little about his family: his wife and children. He seemed completely preoccupied with himself, and he presented his frequent opinions forcefully, as the simple truth. The two men discussed the historical basis of the rift between the Sunni and the Shia, something Doc had studied. And when the Iraqi lectured him on child rearing, Doc nodded with appreciation. When Abu Haydr again proclaimed his talents in the arts of logic and persuasion, Doc announced himself out-argued and persuaded.

  Their conversation turned to politics. Like many other detainees, Abu Haydr was fond of conspiracy theories. He complained that the United States was making a big mistake allowing the Shia, the majority in Iraq, to share power with the Sunni. He lectured Doc on the history of his region, and pointed out that the Iraqi Sunni and the United States shared a very dangerous enemy: Iran. He saw his Shia countrymen not just as natural allies with Iran but as more loyal to Iranian mullahs than to any idea of a greater Iraq. As he saw it—and he presented it as simple fact—the ongoing struggle would determine whether Iraq would survive as a Sunni state or simply become part of a greater Shia Iran. America, Abu Haydr said, would eventually need help from the Sunni to keep this Shia dynasty from dominating the region.

  Doc had heard all this before, but he now said that it was a penetrating insight, that Abu Haydr had come remarkably close to divining America’s true purpose in Iraq. The real reason for the U.S. presence in the region, the gator explained, was to get American forces into position for an attack on Iran. They were building air bases and massing troops. In the coming war, the Sunni and the Americans would be allies. Only those capable of looking past the obvious could see it. The detainee warmed to this. All men enjoy having their genius recognized.

  “The others are ignorant,” Abu Haydr said, referring to Mary and Lenny. “They know nothing of Iraq or the Koran. I have never felt comfortable talking with them.”

  It was not a surprising comment. Detainees often tried to play one team of gators off another. But Doc saw it as an opening, and hit on a ploy. He said that he now understood the prisoner’s full importance. He said he was not surprised that Abu Haydr had been able to lead his questioners around by their noses. Then he took a more mendacious leap. He told Abu Haydr that he, Doc, wasn’t just another gator; that he was, in fact, in charge of the Compound’s entire interrogation mill. He was the boss; that was why he had waited until the last minute to step in.

  “I believe you are a very important man,” he told Abu Haydr. “I think you have a position of power in the insurgency, and I think I am in a position to help you.”

  Abu Haydr was listening with interest.

  “We both know what I want,” Doc said. “You have information you could trade. It is your only source of leverage right now. You don’t want to go to Abu Ghraib, and I can help you, but you have to give me something in trade. A guy as smart as you—you are the type of Sunni we can use to shape the future of Iraq.” If Abu Haydr would betray his organization, Doc implied, the Americans would make him a very big man indeed.

  There was no sign that the detainee knew he was being played. He nodded sagely. This was the kind of moment gators live for. Interrogation, at its most artful, is a contest of wits. The gator has the upper hand, of course. In a situation like the one at Balad, the Task Force had tremendous leverage over any detainee, including his reasonable fear of beating, torture, lengthy imprisonment, or death. While gators at that point were not permitted even to threaten such things, the powerless are slow to surrender suspicion. Still, a prisoner generally has compelling reasons to resist. He might be deeply committed to his cause, or fear the consequences of cooperation if word of it were to reach his violent comrades.

  The gator’s job is to somehow find a way through this tangle of conflicting emotions by intimidation or bluff. The height of the art is to completely turn the detainee, to con him into being helpful to the very cause he has fought against. There comes a moment in every successful interrogation when the detainee’s defenses begin to give way. Doc had come to that moment with Abu Haydr. He had worked at the detainee’s ego as if it were a loose screw. All of his ruses dovetailed. If Doc was an important, powerful man—better still, if he was secretly in charge—his respect for Abu Haydr meant all the more. After all, wouldn’t it take the most capable of the Americans, the man in charge, to fully comprehend and appreciate Abu Haydr’s significance?

  Doc pressed his advantage.

  “You and I know the name of a person in your organization who you are very close to,” Doc said. “I need you to tell me that name so that I know I can trust you. Then we can begin negotiating.” In fact, the American had no particular person in mind. His best hope was that Abu Haydr might name a heretofore unknown mid-level insurrectionist.

  Ever circumspect, Abu Haydr pondered his response even longer than usual.

  At last he said, “Abu Ayyub al-Masri.”

  Doc was flabbergasted. Masri was the senior adviser to the second in command of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Zarqawi. The gator hid his surprise and excitement. He thanked the prisoner, pretending that this was the name he had expected.

  “Now we can begin negotiating, but I have to leave now.”

  “I only will talk to you,” said Abu Haydr.

  “I can’t promise you that,” the American said. “You should talk and be friendly to whoever comes in to question you. I will be watching.”

  He promised—avoiding the usual hedge—to get Abu Haydr an extra blanket and extra food, and did. And he got the detainee off the list for transport to Abu Ghraib.

  6. The Feud That Felled Zarqawi

  “Why did he decide to talk?” asked Doc’s commander.

  The gator explained that he had promised Abu Haydr “an important role in the future of Iraq.” He also reported that he had represented himself to the detainee as the man in charge. That infuriated Lenny, who was already annoyed that Doc had been questioning “his” prisoner behind his
back. Lenny complained that the lie undermined his position in future interrogations.

  “He was scheduled to leave,” Doc reminded him.

  Despite Abu Haydr’s insistence that he speak only to “Dr. Matthew,” his interrogation resumed with the regular team of gators. Lenny promptly told him that their colleague had lied when he said he was in charge.

  Doc was infuriated, and he took his outrage to his commander. Lenny was more concerned about protecting his turf than the mission, Doc complained, and demanded that Lenny be reassigned, but this request, too, was denied. Concerned that his breakthrough would be squandered, Doc decided to go behind his commander’s back. He paid the first of many unauthorized visits to Abu Haydr’s cell in the holding block, away from the cameras monitoring the interrogation rooms. He told Abu Haydr that his colleagues were not allowed to reveal that he was in charge.

  “I’m still around, and I’m still watching,” Doc told him. “Talk to them as if you were talking to me.”

  Abu Haydr asked how much information he would have to give to earn Doc’s assistance.

  “Right now, you are at about 40 percent,” he was told, “but you must never mention our deal to anyone.” Doc swore him to secrecy about their informal talks.

  And, curiously, the feud between the gators began to help the interrogation. Abu Haydr seemed to enjoy the subterfuge. Doc’s visits with him were unauthorized; if his fellow gators found out about them, they would be furious, as would his commander. So Doc, unable to deliver the captive’s information himself, had to persuade Abu Haydr to talk, not to him but to Mary and Lenny. He stayed vague about what information he wanted and kept using the percentage scale to push the detainee. Sure enough, Abu Haydr responded. In his sessions with the others, he confirmed that his status was above Abu Raja’s and began talking about significant figures in Al Qaeda. He was still cagey. He wanted to buy himself Doc’s help, but he didn’t want to pay any more for it than necessary.

  Doc would regularly slip into Abu Haydr’s cell to grade his progress.

  “What percent am I at now?” the detainee would ask.

  “Fifty percent,” Doc would say.

  This went on for three weeks, and soon the Task Force was mapping Zarqawi’s organization with greater and greater detail. During a series of raids on May 13 and 14, shooters killed one of Zarqawi’s lieutenants, Abu Mustafa, and fifteen others in his network. Eight suspects were detained. Intel gleaned from them sent the shooters back out to arrest more men, who delivered still more information. The eventual result was what the Task Force called an “unblinking eye” over the network. On May 17, two of Zarqawi’s associates were killed, one of them his manager of foreign fighters. Punishing raids went on throughout that month.

  Still, even though he clearly relished his “secret” sessions with Doc, Abu Haydr protected the men at the very top of the organization. The ploy played on his belief that he was operating in a multilayered reality, and at a deeper level than those around him; the secrecy just reinforced the ruse that Doc was a high-level connection. In the middle of this process, Mary started questioning Abu Haydr with the older gator they called Tom, and Lenny continued on in separate shifts by himself.

  In early June, after Doc told the prisoner he was at “90 percent,” Abu Haydr promised to give up a vital piece of information at his next session. And he did.

  “My friend is Sheikh al-Rahman,” he told Mary and Tom.

  He explained that Rahman, a figure well-known to the Task Force, met regularly with Zarqawi. He said that whenever they met, Rahman observed a security ritual that involved changing cars a number of times. Only when he got into a small blue car, Abu Haydr said, would he be taken directly to Zarqawi.

  Days later, with the Task Force watching from a drone high over Baghdad, Rahman got into a small blue car, but the surveillance team promptly lost him in traffic. There was tremendous disappointment and frustration at the Compound. Another precious chance had been lost. But after just a few more days, late in the afternoon of June 7, Rahman got into the blue car again. This time the Task Force observed him all the way to the little concrete house in the palm grove at Hibhib. Electronic intercepts may have helped confirm that Rahman was meeting with Zarqawi in the house (the terrorist leader never used cell phones, which are relatively easy to track, but he did use satellite phones, which are harder to pinpoint, but not—as he apparently assumed—impossible). Convinced they had their man, the Task Force leaders decided not to wait for their shooters to get into position. Waiting seemed ill-advised, and besides, storming the house would be likely to result in a firefight; in the confusion, Zarqawi might find another chance to slip away. A faster, more certain, and more deadly strike was ordered.

  High over Iraq, the U.S. Air Force maintains a constant patrol of strike aircraft that can be called on immediately. The mission was assigned to two F-16 pilots, who had spent the day looking for roadside bombs from the sky. The pilots were told only that the target was “high value.” At 6:12 p.m., one of the jets dropped the first laser-guided bomb; minutes later, it dropped the second. Both hit their target, reducing the house to rubble. Villagers said the earth shook with each blast.

  According to General Caldwell, Iraqi forces were on the scene first, having heard the explosion from nearby. They found Zarqawi badly wounded but still alive, the only one to survive the strike. About half an hour after the second bomb hit, he was being carried out on a stretcher when the first American soldiers arrived, an eleven-man military training team embedded with a local Iraqi army unit. The Americans took Zarqawi from the Iraqis, and a medic began treating him, securing his airway. Zarqawi spat blood and drifted into and out of consciousness. Caldwell said that the terrorist tried to get off the stretcher, but the soldiers resecured him. His breathing was labored, and his lungs soon failed him. Then his pulse gave out. It was pleasing to his pursuers that Zarqawi’s last sight was of an American soldier.

  Caldwell initially said that a child was killed in the bombing, but altered his statement the next day to say that no children had been killed. In the Compound, pictures from the blast site showed two dead children, both under age five.

  7. The Fight Goes On

  A tape of the air strike was played at Caldwell’s press conference. A black-and-white video shot from one of the bomber jets shows the long shadows of late afternoon on a dense patch of palm trees, and a large house before a narrow road. The first blast sends dark billows of gray smoke in four directions, in the shape of a cross. About two minutes later, when the smoke has blown off, the second blast produces a smaller, more contained plume of white smoke. Those inside would have had no warning. They would not have heard the jets, nor the bombs hurtling toward them.

  Four of the gators involved were decorated for their service. Mary, Lenny, Tom, and Doc were called to the general’s office. Doc and Lenny, the navy reservist, were awarded Bronze Stars; Mary and Tom received civilian medals. Two other civilian analysts were also recognized.

  Several of those who had worked on the case for months felt the recognition was appropriate but somewhat misallocated. Mike, after all, had developed the information that had led to the arrests of Abu Raja and Abu Haydr; Matt and Nathan had broken Abu Raja; and Doc had invented the ploy that ultimately enabled the killing blow. His deep knowledge of Iraqi history and religion, and of Abu Haydr’s distinctly Arab outlook, went well beyond the two-hour PowerPoint lecture on Iraqi culture the gators got at Fort Huachuca.

  In the long run, the successful hunt for Zarqawi may not amount to much, but it offers lessons in how to use American power in subtler and more effective ways.

  “The elimination of Zarwaqi is neither the beginning nor is it the end, but it is a stride in the direction of law and order, to an Iraq that is primed for the future, by a government that respects the rights of all Iraqi citizens,” said General Caldwell at his triumphant press conference. He later added, “For the first time in three years, the Iraqi people really do have a chance here.”
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  Some of the members of Task Force 145 were less sanguine. “Zarqawi’s death was an achievement, but it was only symbolic,” said one of them. “Zarqawi had hoped to incite a sectarian war, according to his letters, and he accomplished that. His strategy worked: target the Shia so they will retaliate. When we killed Zarqawi, there were ten just like him to take his place. As I see it, there is no incentive right now for the Sunni not to join the insurgency. We haven’t offered them anything—no economic, ideological, or personal incentives. We tell them, ‘You will have a voice in the government,’ but they know that will not happen. They don’t believe the Shia will give them a say. They hate the United States for creating this nightmare that destroyed their lives, and which clouds their future, but they need us as a buffer. I’ve talked to a lot of Sunni, and most are not motivated by religion or ideology. They are just trying to make it.”

  “This is the story of the whole war,” said another. “‘Kill this one guy, and it will make things all better.’ I still don’t understand where this notion comes from. It’s like we are still fighting a conventional war. This one doesn’t work that way.”