by Eric Maddox
Five minutes later we were at the detention facility. I didn’t know what this little prison had been before; it was nothing more than a large office room with two windows and a doorway. But it worked well as a prison. There was enough space to allow thirty to fifty detainees to stay in the big room and still maintain tight security.
“Let’s go see the sheriff,” Jeff said as he parked the car next to the entrance, where three guards were staring into the detention room monitoring about two dozen captives.
“We’ll be right back. We’re going to talk to the sheriff,” Jeff notified the guards and they nodded their approval. Across the way there was another building guarded by a mutt dog with a menacing snarl. The sheriff was the 4th ID staff sergeant in charge of the battalion detention facility. He informed us that the drunk bodyguard had not completely detoxed but that they did have another bodyguard who had been detained the day before. Jeff and I agreed that talking to anyone was better than no one at all. So the sheriff released the bodyguard to us and we watched as the prisoner was handcuffed with thin plastic zip ties and an empty sandbag was placed over his head. We put him in the backseat with Adam and returned to the task force headquarters.
Jeff, who had done most of the interrogations before I came, had used the mansion’s guesthouse for questioning detainees. It was there that we took the bodyguard. The place was well suited for the task at hand. It had four bedrooms, the largest of which had a couple of couches, some plastic folding chairs, and a piece of plywood propped on ration boxes to serve as a table. The windows were also covered with plywood but what really made it ideal was the air-conditioning. Considering the long hours spent in there, and the intensity of the work being done, air-conditioning was essential to cope with the 120-degree heat.
“So how do you want to handle this?” Jeff was being polite by asking me first, but I knew the meaning behind his words: You’re the interrogator. This is where you earn your keep.
“I’m flexible. I figured I’d just start. Any time you want to jump in is fine with me. Maybe we can take a break every hour or so, to give the terp a rest and evaluate where we’re at.”
Jeff agreed. I knew I needed him in there with me. First, he knew more about the situation on the ground than I did. But equally important was the fact that I wanted to be able to gain his trust in my ability to interrogate. Not that I exactly trusted myself. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
But this really wasn’t about proving anything to him, or to anyone else. I had to be totally focused on getting information, information the task force could use. As of that moment I had no idea what this handcuffed man with a bag on his head might be able to tell me, or if he’d tell me anything at all. I was looking for something. I just had no idea what it was.
I could feel Jeff and Adam’s eyes on me as I sat down and removed the bag from the prisoner’s head. I took a deep breath. Those few minutes I’d spent last night in the chaos and confusion of the raid were just a warm-up. Now I needed to earn my keep.
The prisoner’s name was Rafi Idham Ibrahim Al-Hasan Al-Tikriti. Rafi was the name his parent’s gave him; Idham was his father; Ibrahim was his grandfather; Al-Hasan was his tribe and Al-Tikriti identified his hometown. His name alone provided some useful information.
The rest would be up to me. And I wanted to find out as much as I could. I was new to the job, new to the country, new to the war. To me Rafi was more than a detainee; he was a walking encyclopedia. He could tell me what it was like to be an Iraqi, a Muslim, a Sunni. He could describe the world of a bodyguard and take me inside their inner circle. I needed to hear it all. But most of all, I needed to learn what it meant to be an interrogator. This was my chance for some on-the-job training.
From the beginning I had my doubts about my prisoner. He was a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army, but he looked like he was more familiar with taking orders than giving them. Hunched and frail, he acted polite and eager to please, ready to tell me anything he thought I wanted to hear. As time went on and I gained more experience interrogating, I would learn the detainees with balls were actually the best subjects. They didn’t just tell you what they thought you wanted to hear. Instead they’d test and challenge you in a game of wits to see who would prevail. When you went toe to toe with them, at least you had the chance to catch them in a lie. The weak and passive ones were only interested in placating you and staying out of trouble. You had to move past their fear and submission to even have a chance of getting at the truth. For the moment, all Rafi wanted us to know was how happy he was to be fully cooperating with the liberators of his country.
“How do you feed your family, Rafi?” I asked him once I’d gotten the preliminaries out of the way—mostly routine questions about his background. He answered with a longwinded story about how he had retired from the military, had gone into farming and was then drafted back into service in the run-up to the war. It was all pretty vague, but I preferred it that way, even though it took hours to get through. I wanted to know what he was most afraid to tell us.
“What did you do when you left the military?” I asked.
He went on to disavow any knowledge or connection to the regime. “I only worked at the palace,” he insisted.
“Not where, Rafi. What? What did you do?”
“Hamaya,” he muttered. It was the Arabic word for “bodyguard.” After several hours going around in circles we were finally getting somewhere.
“Whose bodyguard?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Rafi glanced around the room, like he was looking for a way out.
“Whose bodyguard!” I repeated loudly.
Rafi flinched. “I was the lowest bodyguard for the president,” he whispered.
“Say ‘Saddam,’ asshole!” Adam shouted. “He’s not the president anymore.” Adam was proving his worth as a terp. He sensed the purpose behind my tactics and actually seemed to be getting angry along with me.
I let a moment pass in silence. I wanted Rafi to think about where this was going. “We know you were Saddam’s bodyguard,” I said at last. “I just wanted to see how long you were going to avoid telling me.”
“I was not avoiding you, mister,” he insisted. “I was ashamed that they made me come back.”
“What was your job in the army, before the war?”
“I am a retired lieutenant colonel.”
“I didn’t ask for your rank,” I barked, inches from his face. “I asked what your fucking job was!”
“Hamaya.” His voice was barely audible.
“So you were ashamed to come back to take a job you’d already done for twenty years?” I asked with maximum sarcasm.
“I was the lowest bodyguard,” he repeated helplessly.
“How is it that you were a lieutenant colonel and still just an insignificant bodyguard?”
“I was related to Saddam. He gave me the rank.”
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Rafi realized he’d made a serious mistake. This was the one fact he definitely didn’t want us to know.
“How are you related to Saddam?” I asked, dropping my voice and looking him in the eye.
“My grandfather took care of him,” he answered very slowly and carefully. “My father was close to him.”
“I want to know how you are related.”
“Mister, there is no blood between us.”
For the first time Jeff spoke up, telling Rafi clearly how he was sick of his pathetic groveling attitude, his lies and even his annoying personality. Jeff’s deep-set eyes were flashing and his jaw was clenched. It was the first time I’d seen his temper flare, but it wouldn’t be the last.
Over the next hour we both worked on the prisoner until we had gotten all the details of his family tree. By that time, it was clear that Rafi was closer to Saddam than we could have expected. He was, in fact, a nephew once removed. His father, Rafi told me, was Saddam’s oldest and dearest stepbrother, and Rafi’s dad was like a father to Saddam.
“But I hate
Saddam,” Rafi insisted. “I will kill him myself. Thank you, mister, for saving my country. Together we will make a powerful team to bring down the regime.”
“Bring down the regime?” I repeated, “You are the regime, Rafi. You’re Saddam’s nephew and one of his bodyguards. Do you know what that means?”
“But I hate—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Jeff shouted.
In any interrogation, one of the primary purposes is to establish guilt. In a war like the one we were fighting, when the enemy was everywhere and nowhere, that could prove extremely difficult. It was more than convincing yourself that the person you were questioning was a bad guy. You had to convince him of the fact. By revealing his close connection to Saddam, Rafi had also revealed that he had been trying to deceive us every chance he had. “We got you, Rafi,” I continued. “We’ve got enough to put you in prison for the rest of your life.”
“But I want to help,” he whined.
“So help. Help me help you.” I leaned in again. “I don’t like you, Rafi. You’ve done nothing but waste my time. This is your last chance. Give me a reason to help you. If I don’t help you, nobody else will.”
I was working purely on instinct. It was only later, after a lot of trial and error, that I realized I had come to a critical juncture in the interrogation process. This was the plea bargaining phase. We knew, and Rafi knew, that he was in trouble. My job was to convince him that honesty and cooperation was the better alternative to definite, long-term confinement. Once I’d made my pitch, I just kept repeating it to make sure he understood, and that nothing was going to happen one way or the other until he made his decision.
I had learned some valuable lessons in the hours I’d spent questioning Rafi. The most important was the value of complete sincerity. Whatever you were feeling at any given moment—anger, sympathy, even boredom—it had to be real. Otherwise they’d see right through you. Every emotion was operating at its peak level and it was essential to maintain that intensity. For a detainee, an interrogation is the most important moment of his life. His fate is hanging in the balance. An interrogator has to understand that and treat the situation accordingly.
At the same time I had to formulate each question and anticipate where the answers would lead. I was trying to stay a few steps ahead of the process, without seeming too calculated. I was also beginning to see the benefit of simply talking in a way that didn’t grate or irritate. Whether I was being reasonable or pissed off, what mattered was that my tone of voice didn’t get in the way of connecting with the prisoner.
These techniques came in handy as I continued the interrogation. After a few hours, Rafi began to give up more information. I knew what the ultimate goal was: to get actionable intelligence for the task force to do their job. That was one reason Jeff’s participation was so important. If our interrogation actually produced a lead, he’d have as much time and effort invested in the results as I did.
But in the meantime, I was also getting a better understanding of Saddam’s network of bodyguards. As my questioning continued, I pressed Rafi for details on the system. There were, he explained, three levels of bodyguards. The innermost circle was with the leader at all times. The second circle would usually secure locations in advance of Saddam’s travels throughout the country. The third circle was assigned to fixed locations. Rafi, for example, claimed to be the night shift guard at one of Saddam’s Baghdad palaces. But as helpful as Rafi’s information might have been, it wasn’t getting the task force any closer to real targets. It was time for me to step aside and let Jeff do his thing.
“Where are the terrorists?’ he asked Rafi, as if we were starting the whole process all over again.
“Terrorists?” Rafi asked with wide-eyed innocence.
Now it was Jeff’s turn to get in his face. “Listen, fucker,” he hissed. “American soldiers are getting shot at every day around here. Who’s doing it? Tell me or I swear to God I’ll die before you see the light of day again.”
“But I don’t know any terror—”
“Stop!” I jumped up, shouting. I didn’t want to hear those words coming out of his mouth. Once he was committed to that version of his story—that he had no knowledge or connection to the insurgency—I was sure he’d stick with it. He didn’t want to be caught lying again, and the last thing I wanted was to back him into that particular corner. I started talking fast, to keep him from trying to tell us what he didn’t know. “I have a job to do, Rafi. It’s very simple. I need to catch the bad guys. If I do my job, my boss will like me. If you help me do my job, I will like you. Then I will help you. Do you want me to help you, Rafi?”
He nodded meekly.
“I know you do. And the way you can help me is to give me the names and locations of as many terrorists as you can.”
“I want to say something,” he interjected before I stopped him again.
“Rafi, I’m going to let you speak. But please don’t tell me that you don’t know any terrorists.” I took a deep breath. “Now, what are you never, ever going to tell me again?”
“I am never going to tell you that I don’t know any terrorists.”
“Good,” I said. “So what do you want to say?”
“I want to say that when I am free, I hope you will not forget my name and that we can work together for many years to come.”
“Why would I set you free, Rafi?”
“Because I am innocent.”
I let myself get angry again. “Do I care about your innocence?” I shouted. “I only care about one thing, Rafi. What is that?” He looked confused and frightened. “My job, you shithead! That’s all I care about!” I stood over the prisoner and barked. “What is my job, Rafi?”
“To catch the bad guys, mister,” he replied, trembling.
“Are you going to help me catch the bad guys, Rafi?”
There was a long pause. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. When he finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “Mister, I have heard things but I don’t know for certain. I don’t want to bring trouble if I haven’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“You’re already in trouble, Rafi. Tell me what you heard.”
He looked from Jeff to me and back again. I could see him squirming, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water, trying to form the words. “Two men,” he said at last. “They work at a car wash. They hate Americans.”
Once he got over that hurdle, it turned out that Rafi had more information. He claimed that there were, at most, only three men remaining in Tikrit who had been connected with the regime. Rafi also knew their jobs, their family members, and where they had lived. As interesting as this was, I was getting increasingly frustrated and so was Jeff. During a break he told me that the men Rafi had named were insignificant during the regime and were likely to be even more insignificant now. According to Rafi, every other important person he knew had either fled or already been captured. He kept insisting he had no idea where we could find any active insurgents. I was beginning to wonder just how helpful this prisoner could be. Wouldn’t it already be well known that he was in American custody? Wouldn’t the insurgents have already changed their locations and routines as a precaution? Even if Rafi knew where they were, wouldn’t they be long gone? But I kept my doubts to myself. I wanted Rafi to think that he was giving us what we wanted, to keep alive his hope of being freed.
It was midnight before we finished with Rafi and took him back to the prison. Back at the house, Jeff and I compared notes on the interrogation.
“What do you think?” Jeff asked me. Behind the simple question was another test. I was the professional interrogator. He wanted to hear my “expert” analysis.
“I don’t think there’s any way that guy doesn’t know something,” I said. “He’s a former bodyguard and a nephew of Saddam. But three former low-level guys in the regime who are now working at a car wash aren’t what we’re looking for.”
“Yeah,” Jeff agreed. He sounded as tired as I was. “Tha
t shit was weak. But I’ll run it by Matt and Jack and see what they think.”
I headed to the dining room for something to eat. I needed to think over what had just happened. On one level the interrogation had been a failure. We hadn’t gotten actionable intelligence, at least as far as I could tell. Maybe Rafi really didn’t know anything. Or maybe he did and I just hadn’t pried it out of him.
But, in another way, I was exhilarated by the experience. For the first time since I’d signed up for the job, I realized that I had an innate capability to be an interrogator. I may not have known exactly how to do it yet, but I knew I could do it.
As I sat alone at the table, I reviewed all the mistakes I had made over the last several hours. I had asked unnecessary questions; let Rafi see where I was going before I got there; lost my temper when I should have stayed calm and vice versa. I now had firsthand experience in some of the many ways to screw up an interrogation. I couldn’t tell myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, but at least I knew what the mistakes were. Slowly I was beginning to learn how to keep the details straight; how to close out the paths of evasion and how not to let a prisoner see the traps I was laying for him. I was beginning to understand not just how to ask questions but why I was asking the questions. Raw information was less important than what that information told me about the prisoner I was questioning: what he was thinking, what he was afraid of, what he had to hide. The point wasn’t just to catch him in a lie. I would quickly come to realize that most of what my prisoners told me were lies. It was the reason they were lying that was important.
At the same time, I had begun to painstakingly put together a picture of Tikrit. Rafi had his version of the city. The next guy I interrogated would have another version, with maybe a little overlap. If they let me stay, maybe I’d eventually find the way it all fit together.