by Eric Maddox
There was something else I needed to know. “Why did you focus on the bodyguards?” I asked Jared.
“Look,” he said, as if he was explaining it to a kid, “there’s attacks going on all the time in Tikrit. IEDs, RPGs, ambushes. Somebody has to be doing it. I think these bodyguards might have some answers.”
“So you’re an interrogator?”
He shook his head, and then nodded at the men around us, getting ready for the raid. “These guys do their own interrogating,” he explained. “I just translate. But when they’re done, they sometimes let me ask questions about my list. After that, we ship the prisoners down to Baghdad, to the BIAP jail. I guess they get interrogated down there.”
I knew better. There were so many detainees at the airport compound that most of the them were just being stored until someone could figure out what to do with them. Detainees brought from Tikrit and elsewhere were not a high priority. But the information the terp was providing had given me an idea. After five days in Baghdad, interrogating mostly low-level prisoners, I didn’t feel as if I’d accomplished a lot. Maybe I’d be of more use in Tikrit. And maybe there was something to Jared’s bodyguard theory.
“You think they could use a full-time interrogator up here?” I asked.
“Not really. We’ve been able to handle it so far.”
That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, so I came at it from another direction. “Where do you guys get your intelligence?” I asked.
Over the next few minutes, Jared gave me a rundown on the insurgency situation in Tikrit. It was the 4th Infantry Division, he told me, which had initially developed informant sources in the area and passed along whatever information they gleaned to the task force. They were kept pretty busy at first, hunting down the High Value Targets that were still clustered in Saddam’s hometown. But it wasn’t long before that well had run dry. The way the terp saw it, the only reason they were still in the area was because of Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri.
“Who’s that?” I asked, once again showing my ignorance.
“He’s Black List number six,” Jared told me. “You know, from the deck of cards?”
That part I got. The DOD had put together a pack of playing cards at the beginning of the war. On the face of the cards were the fifty-five most wanted men in Iraq: the Black List. Saddam was Black List #1, the Ace of Spades. His sons, Uday and Qusay were BLs #2 and #3. They’d already been accounted for, killed in a bloody shoot-out in Mosul the day before I arrived in Baghdad. BL #4 was the presidential secretary, Hamid Mahmud, while #5 on the list was the notorious Chemical Ali. As BL #6, Al-Duri, the King of Clubs, was a top military adviser to Saddam and a prime suspect in the insurgent activities around Tikrit. There were fifty-two in all. Along with the three Jokers that made it fifty-five.
The deck of cards was part of a major effort to take the hunt for Saddam and his cronies nationwide. There was no question that finding him was a top priority. Ground troops, Special Operations Forces, and intelligence operatives had scoured the country in the months after the invasion. Every person on the deck was a High Value Target for the U.S. military. But there was only one Ace of Spades. I never heard anyone say it, but we would have gladly traded every wanted man on the entire deck of cards for Saddam.
“We’re pretty sure Al-Duri is still around here somewhere,”
Jared told me. “If we can find Al-Duri, he might lead us to Saddam.”
I wanted to ask another question. I wanted to ask a lot of other questions. But Jared’s information dump was over. The team was ready, locked, and loaded. The hit was about to happen.
Chapter 2
OUTSIDE THE WIRE
0045 29JUL2003
A total of eight of us would go on tonight’s raid. Aside from Jared and me, there were six shooters from the task force, including a guy who introduced himself to me as Carl. He’d been given the chore of keeping an eye on me during the operation.
“Stick close,” he said. “We’ll be attached to a platoon from Fourth ID. Our job is strictly SSE.” He saw the puzzled expression on my face. “Sensitive Site Exploitation,” he patiently explained. “Fourth ID will lock down the location. Then we’ll go in for a search and interrogate whoever we find.”
“Al-Muslit.” I nodded, remembering what Jared had told me.
“That’s the plan,” he replied, but something in his voice told me that a hit doesn’t always go according to plan. I followed him out to the rear of the mansion where two top-of-the-line Mercedes sedans were parked. I found out later that the luxury ride I was in had previously been driven by two teenage nieces of Saddam’s, the daughters of his half brother Barzan. Barzan was one of the most wanted men in Iraq, the Five of Clubs in the deck of High Value Targets; his house had been raided shortly before my arrival. The team had been using the girls’ car ever since.
It was after one A.M. when Jared and I climbed into the backseat of one of the Mercedes, with Carl at the wheel and another shooter, named Sam, riding shotgun. The other four members of the team were in the car in front of us. We peeled out and headed off at top speed to link up with the 4th ID platoon at their camp near Beiji, a village just north of Tikrit.
Whatever lingering fatigue I had evaporated in a rush of adrenaline. Traveling between the compound and the 4th ID outpost, we were in enemy territory, subject to RPGs, sniper fire and anything else they could throw at us. And, since there was a nine P.M. curfew in place, anyone on the road at that hour had to be an American. We needed to get where we were going fast, and within minutes were rocketing through clouds of dust at a hundred miles an hour.
As we skidded into the last curve that would take us down a mile-long straightaway to Beiji, the darkness around us suddenly erupted in deafening chaos. The driver lurched violently to avoid the gunfire and it felt like we were trapped inside a rolling steel drum as he swerved. From the flashes of light and the thudding noise, I knew that a fifty-caliber machine gun had opened up on us. I also knew that, with a gun as big as a fifty-cal, it’s hard to miss.
The car in front of us had disappeared into the dust as Carl slammed on the brakes and we went into a long slide. “Oh fuck!” someone said, as Carl threw open the door and jumped out.
“Secure the vehicle!” he shouted to Sam as he ran into the darkness, yelling, “USA! USA!”
As quickly as it had started, the incoming fire was over and the three of us sat in silence waiting for what would happen next. I remember thinking nothing, my mind still reeling from the reality of getting shot at, my pulse hammering in my ears. So this was what it was like outside the wire.
After what seemed an eternity, Carl reappeared in the beams of the headlights. He got back in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel and trying to catch his breath.
“What happened, man?” asked Sam.
“The guard up ahead didn’t get word we were coming through,” Carl said, starting the car again and pulling back onto the road. “He said we fired first. I guess that’s the standard line when you light up your own guys. Luckily he couldn’t shoot straight.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re okay. Let’s just get linked up and we’ll figure out what went wrong later.” He turned to the backseat. “You all right?”
“No problem,” I said as casually as possible. The last thing Carl needed was some cherry interrogator freaking out on him. He had other things to think about. So did I. I couldn’t remember if I had packed an extra pair of underwear, but the ones I was wearing were ruined for sure. I’d never been in a friendly fire incident before and I found myself wondering who’d come up with that expression. Friendly or not, a fifty-caliber round is still going to kill you.
The 4th ID platoon that was waiting for us at the Beiji camp was actually more the size of a full company. I would later discover that this was how they handled most of their operations, with more manpower than was really called for. As we traded our Benzes for a Humvee, I got a chance to talk briefly with the intelligence
officer who had developed the information for the raid. His source was a kid, he told me, who had previously turned up some weapons caches. But tonight was different. This was the informant’s first big target.
The name of the bodyguard we were after, I found out, was Nezham Hasan Jasim Al-Muslit. It was a mouthful, like most Arabic names, made up of your grandfather’s, your father’s, and your given name, along with your tribal affiliation. It was complicated and confusing, but it was also very useful in establishing links and interlocking alliances. Just by looking at a man’s name, you could tell to whom he was related and even where his loyalties lay.
According to the informant, Nezham’s loyalties were firmly with Saddam, his former boss. Nezham was supposed to be driving across the Syrian border that morning. Maybe he was going there to meet with Saddam. I wanted to know where the kid had gotten such valuable intelligence, but it didn’t seem like my place to ask. So I climbed in the Humvee with the rest of the team and we drove up the road as Carl explained what was about to happen.
“We’re going to hang back and let them do the raid. Then we’ll search the place.” He turned to me. “You talk to whoever’s in there and let me know what you find out.”
The Humvee pulled off the road and the team dismounted to set up a security perimeter. Jared and I stayed close to the vehicle and for about thirty seconds there was nothing to listen to but the buzz of insects. It was only when I heard the unmistakable sound of a door being broken down that I realized how close to the house we actually were.
Uncomfortably close. Almost immediately an AK-47 started chattering, dumping a thirty-round clip. It had to be an insurgent; coalition forces didn’t use that weapon. There was some random yelling, followed by a few piercing screams. Then, once again, silence. After five tense minutes, the radio crackled to life. We’d gotten word to move up.
The dusty yard was full of 4th ID soldiers posted around a typical Iraqi farmhouse, mud brick and cinderblock built low to the ground. As we approached the front door, hanging off its hinges, Carl signaled for one of the shooters to accompany me inside. “This is Superfly,” he told me. I figured that since Superfly had been stuck babysitting me; he was probably one of the junior members of the team. Jared joined us.
In a large room with a low ceiling, a man was sitting on the floor. Standing over him were a couple of 4th ID guards.
“Here’s your guy,” one of them said as we entered.
The prisoner’s hands were cuffed behind his back and a heavy blindfold covered his eyes. His shirt was drenched in blood and I could see it running down his jaw and neck.
“Is he shot?” I asked.
“No,” replied the other guard. I wondered if he noticed how pale I’d turned. “Lucky for him we just butt stroked him. He was the one that opened up on us.”
“If we did the hit he’d have been dead as soon as we saw the muzzle flash,” Superfly muttered.
I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you take the blindfold off?” I suggested. I wanted to be eye to eye with this guy when I questioned him.
One of the guards obliged, pulling back the blood-soaked cloth. I’d never been very good with blood, going back to my early days in the infantry, when training accidents were not uncommon. It is something I’ve always tried to hide, with varying degrees of success.
This was going to be harder than most. Where the guy’s left eye should have been, there was an empty socket. I knelt down. “Are you Nezham Hasan?” I asked as Jared translated.
The prisoner, a thin, weather-beaten farmer who looked to be about fifty, shook his head.
“Who are you?”
He stuttered his name.
“Do you know Nezham Hasan?”
Shaking his head again, he looked scared, his one eye signaling panic. I leaned in closer, fighting nausea, and asked him the question again. This time he let loose with a long string of Arabic. “What’s he saying?” I asked Jared.
“He says Nezham owns this place,” the terp replied. “He only farms the land for him. He says he thought he was being robbed. That’s why he opened fire.”
“When was the last time you saw Nezham?”
“He was here four hours ago,” Jared translated.
“Where is he now?” I received a look of one-eyed fear. It took a few more rounds of back and forth questioning, but I finally got him to reveal that Nezham had left earlier for his home in nearby Beiji. He went on to describe the house as having a large television antenna on the roof.
“We’ve been to that place before,” volunteered one of the 4th ID platoon sergeants, who by this time had joined several others in watching the interrogation. “I know exactly where it is.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but identifying the house of a former bodyguard was, by itself, no big deal. By the time I’d arrived in Tikrit, virtually every location owned by a member of the regime had been raided at least once. The difference this time was that we might actually find one of them at home.
I passed on what I’d learned to Carl. He consulted briefly with the 4th ID company commander. “Tell this old man he’s lucky to be alive,” he said to Jared afterward. “Tell him to sit here until we’re all gone and not to make a move.” He turned to the team. “We’re going to Beiji,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the second target had been secured. It was just as the old man had described it, down to the oversize aerial on the roof. But there was no Nezham. Instead I found myself interrogating a group of five defiant teenagers, and two of them admitted to being nephews of our quarry. They hadn’t seen their uncle in months, they swore. Although I knew they were lying through their teeth, I also knew we’d hit a dead end.
It was seven in the morning when we got back to the compound. The team gathered around a large table in the mansion’s dining room to talk over the night’s events, drinking Cokes and replaying the friendly fire incident.
At some point, someone must have shown me where to sleep. But I don’t remember how I got to the cot. I don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow.
Chapter 3
INTERROGATION 101
There was no reason to think I had any special qualifications to be an interrogator for the task force in Tikrit. From that first night of the raid, it had begun to dawn on me that getting good intelligence was going to require a different set of skills than those I’d learned in interrogation school.
That’s not to say I hadn’t received the best training available at the time, maybe the best in the world. In 1999 I had attended an eight-week interrogation course at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. There I was taught military doctrines from Field Manual 34-52, on how to conduct effective interrogations in conformity with U.S. and international laws. I learned how to avoid getting simple yes-or-no responses by asking interrogative questions: who, what, when, where, why, what else, and what other. I was instructed in psychological approaches like Pride & Ego Up, which was meant to build up a prisoner; and Pride & Ego Down, which was meant to tear him down. I was introduced to the Geneva Convention rules prohibiting physical or mental duress, torture, or other forms of coercion to secure information.
What I didn’t learn was how to actually get the job done. Most of my instructors had never interrogated a real live prisoner. There had been very few prisoners since Vietnam. The means and methods I was taught assumed I would be in a battlefield environment much like that war, or even World War II. There was no preparation for modern urban combat, where the enemy is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I would soon find out I was going to need to start from scratch.
But as much as I had to learn, I also had innate abilities I brought to the mission. Like anyone else, I’m really smart at some things and really dumb at others. It just happens that the things I’m smart at were helpful to becoming a good interrogator. It’s a certain capacity I think I was born with.
In some ways my upbringing wasn’t that different from any other typical American kid. I was born in Enid, Oklahoma,
and raised in the small town of Sapulpa, on the outskirts of Tulsa. I was active in my church youth group and grew up playing baseball and football. I’ve always loved sports especially football and even after shipping out to Iraq, I did my best to keep up with the incredible 2003–4 season the Oklahoma Sooners were having.
OU is my alma mater, where I joined a fraternity, partied hard, and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had long since realized that, with my stature and weight—five feet nine inches and one hundred fifty-five pounds—my football career would come to a screeching halt after high school. I studied political science with some vague idea that I would go on to law school.
The fact was I had no idea what to do. After graduating, I would have the choice of staying on for a law degree or, like most white, middle-class males, I would go on to find an entry-level job in business, followed by a wife and kids and a membership at the local country club. But what I really wanted was to step out of my sheltered life for once. I needed to do something that I felt made a difference, at least in my world. I wanted to serve in the military. In the summer before my senior year I went to the U.S. Army recruiting office and signed up, postdating my enlistment date until after I graduated from OU.
Serving my country was my main goal, but I also had a close buddy who definitely motivated me. His name was Casey and we’d always had a friendly rivalry growing up in Sapulpa. Casey had joined the Army a year before I did. After that, our military careers tracked pretty closely, with Casey always being one step ahead of me. When I was in basic training, he was in Ranger School. Then, when I went to Ranger School, he went to Special Forces. It was only after he was in SF that our paths diverged. I would eventually become an interrogator and he went with his Special Forces team to Bosnia, where he was honored for saving hundreds of lives while stationed there.