by Eric Maddox
At the top, of course, was Saddam. Below him were the Al-Muslit brothers and Muhammad Haddoushi. Kelly also insisted on adding Al-Duri. I didn’t object; even though it seemed like a waste of time, I realized he was a priority for the others. But I knew who belonged at the top of that chart. The only targets I wanted the new team to focus on were the Al-Muslits. From Ahmed Yasin’s interrogation on, I would ignore any rumors or tips on Al-Duri that might come my way.
I also wanted to drop Haddoushi from the list, even though he remained a number one priority for the 4th ID. I’d been chasing this guy since I got to Tikrit and was beginning to have my doubts about his value as a target. The reason he had been singled out was because his nephew had been killed in the shoot-out with Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay. The assumption was that because they were involved, so was he. But as time went on I was less and less convinced that Haddoushi was active in the insurgency, much less that he could take us to Saddam.
To my way of thinking, I wasn’t being prejudicial in the preferences for the link diagram, just selective. I was still talking to dozens of people a week, from low-level detainees to walk-ins to sources. The questioning, in turn, produced hundreds of names of people who might or might not have been worth pursuing. Some of them, no doubt, were bad guys. Others may have been totally innocent or an enemy someone wanted us to get out of the way. It was my job to sort through it all and select targets whose capture would decapitate the insurgency. I had already decided who those targets were.
When Kelly and I finished the link diagram, he warned me to keep it out of sight if any top brass should drop by for a visit. The priorities I had established were definitely not the same ones being worked everywhere else in Iraq. What was important to me was that Kelly and Bam Bam didn’t reject them outright. Kelly just didn’t want anyone else to know what we were doing. It was a legitimate concern. We might get shut down before we got started.
I was in a unique position. When I’d first arrived in Tikrit, I had no say in the targets we went after. They had been established before I got there. But in the months that followed, as the raids kept producing dry holes, it was clear our intelligence capabilities were coming up short. We needed a new approach and I was in the right place at the right time to provide it.
Yet even with the arrival of the new team, I didn’t have the authority or influence to take the hunt where I thought it should go. I was still just one link in an intelligence-gathering team that weighed and evaluated information from many sources. The information gathered from prisoners was still considered of less value than what came from the sources developed by case officers.
That situation changed one afternoon in late October. Rod, the case officer who had arrived with the new team, was a former Navy SEAL. He occasionally joined the operators at the shooting range; it was as much to try to establish a rapport with the elite soldiers as to hone his own skills. But something had gone wrong and he’d been wounded by a stray fragment from an M-203. An M-203 is a grenade launcher that attaches to the bottom of an M-4 rifle, and under normal circumstances should have exploded a safe distance from the shooter. The freak accident had sent a small piece of shrapnel into Rod’s stomach and, although the wound wasn’t serious, they couldn’t locate the piece and would have to perform exploratory surgery. He was immediately out of commission and was shipped off to Germany for medical treatment.
I liked Rod. We’d had the beginnings of a good working relationship and I was sorry to see him go. On the other hand, the accident presented me with a chance to organize our intelligence operation in a whole new way. By the next day, I had been informed that Rod was not going to be replaced. I was being handed his sources and was to guide them as I saw fit. Rod’s boss was going to handle all the logistics with the sources, but it was up to me now to decide which targets they would go after. Rod’s misfortune had been a stroke of luck for me. I was suddenly in charge of all human intelligence for the team. Along with interrogating, I would now be running the source meetings. It no longer mattered whether it was from prisoners or informants. There would finally be a coordinated effort to gather actionable intelligence in Tikrit.
And I already knew exactly how I wanted to focus the new resources. I didn’t waste any time. Meeting with my old friend Sergeant Olsen, who commanded one of the most conscientious of the 4th ID’s THT teams, I debriefed him on everything I had learned about the Al-Muslits. The implication was clear: these were the guys we were going after now. Olsen returned the next day with the Three Amigos in tow. I hadn’t talked to the trio of informants since I’d sent them off a few weeks earlier to see if they could find Radman. Now they were back, claiming they had a lead on Farris Yasin instead. They still wanted weapons, vehicles, and cell phones. I wasn’t sure about these guys but still thought they might be useful.
“Farris Yasin has two friends,” I told them, recalling what Ahmed had revealed. “One of them is Shakir and the other is Abu Qasar. Where are they?”
“Shakir is the leader of an insurgency group in the north,” the spokesman replied.
“What about Abu Qasar?”
They looked at each other, grinning. “Mister,” the main amigo continued, “you can find Abu Qasar yourself. He is always at the teashop in town. He is too old to fight.”
“Is he a friend of Farris Yasin?”
They all nodded.
“So go get him.”
“We will soon get you Farris Yasin,” the spokesman insisted. “Abu Qasar is nothing.”
“Good,” I replied. “Then you shouldn’t have a problem bringing him to me. You do that and I’ll give each of you an AK-47. Hell, I’ll even throw in a car.”
It wasn’t until early November that we finally got a break in the search for the top tier of Al-Muslits. The problem was, I didn’t recognize it when it finally showed up.
The information had come from a source that the 4th ID military police had been developing. His name was Izzecki, from the northern city of Kirkuk, and he was in his early twenties. He’d been brought to me in the first place because he insisted that he knew exactly where Farris Yasin was and would take us to him immediately. But I had the feeling that something wasn’t lining up with the kid. He claimed to be Farris Yasin’s best friend. That seemed unlikely since there was at least a thirty-year age difference between them. He also couldn’t tell me much about the family or prewar activities of this powerful Al-Muslit. Then he drew a blank when I asked him to name some other friends of Farris Yasin. He had no knowledge of either Shakir or the old man Abu Qasar whom I knew were close to Farris.
It was pretty much downhill from there. Izzecki insisted he had no prior knowledge of his supposed friend’s insurgent activities. It was only when he learned that the Americans wanted Farris that he decided to turn him in for the reward. There would be a fight to the death, he warned, when we tried to arrest Farris. He insisted that we should bomb the house where he was hiding.
I wasn’t worried about a fight to the death. I knew the team would be in and out of the location before anyone could react. What really bothered me was the fact that this kid had come out of nowhere with valuable intelligence on a dangerous insurgent leader and wanted us to hit him with everything we had. At the same time, he refused to go on the raid or to pick out Farris from a lineup if we captured him alive.
Who was really at that site? Was it Farris Yasin or someone Izzecki wanted out of the way? Maybe this was all about using the Americans to do his dirty work and pick up some quick cash in the bargain.
After a couple of hours, I took Kelly aside and recommended that we definitely not raid the house that Izzecki had identified as Farris Yasin’s hideout. But the 4th ID military police battalion commander didn’t see it that way. And he had the power to give the raid a green light. Behind every one of these hazardous sorties was a political reality that made them even more risky. The task force in Baghdad was keeping a close watch on everything that happened in the regions where teams had been assigned. Tikrit was no d
ifferent. We had had our share of dry holes and while the difficulties of procuring actionable intelligence was understood, every one of those failed raids had a name attached to it. Get enough black marks next to your name and they’d get someone else to do your job.
But it wasn’t even as simple as that. There were degrees of failure. If you raided a house in search of a target and couldn’t prove he had ever been there, you got written up for a completely dry hole. If you could establish that he’d been there within the last forty-eight hours, you got away with what I called a damp hole. Not as bad. If the guy had actually been there within the last two hours but you just missed him, you’d pretty much done your job.
The worst thing that could happen was approving a hit that turned out to be an ambush. I didn’t think that was what Izzecki was leading us into, but I was pretty sure it was a completely dry hole and I didn’t want it in my file. I just didn’t trust the guy and didn’t want to take a chance on what I considered to be, at best, questionable information.
I went with Kelly to break the news to the battalion commander, a colonel with whom I’d worked before. He’d made it clear he was after big fish and believed that he had an instinctive knack for sorting good information from bad. “It just feels right,” he’d say. I knew it was about more than just feeling. My gut might be telling me something, but that was never enough. I had to prove it, tie up the loose ends, and fill in the blanks. Even then, it sometimes wasn’t sufficient. Men would be putting themselves in harm’s way based on my best guess. I had to make sure it was as educated and objective as possible.
“Sir,” I told the colonel, “there is a ninety percent chance that Farris Yasin is not going to be there.”
Those were odds he was willing to take. With a hard-edged stare he told us, “I just want to make sure you realize that if you don’t want it, then we’ll do this hit ourselves.”
We returned to the house. It was the day before the Sooners’ game with Texas A&M, who had ruined our chances of an undefeated season the year before. I was more nervous about the outcome of that game than whether or not I had made the right decision about the hit: there was just no way that kid knew Farris Yasin. After another long night of interrogations, I finally crawled into bed. A few hours later, Bam Bam was shaking me by the shoulder.
“Eric,” he said. “I need you to go over to the MPs and pick up Farris Yasin.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming. I hoped I was. Aside from recommending a raid that becomes an ambush, the second most serious screwup is turning down a solid hit. I sat up in bed with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure what was worse: preventing the team from capturing one of the most wanted Al-Muslits on my own list, or having to face the colonel who had actually done the job against my advice.
Kelly offered to go over with me to the 4th ID compound to pick up the prisoner. “What am I going to say to the colonel?” I wondered as we made our way through the checkpoint.
“Don’t look at me,” Kelly replied. “I’m not the one who told him ninety percent.”
From then on, things only got worse. Farris Yasin was one of the hardest and most frustrating interrogations I’d ever conducted. I knew he was a hardened criminal, a street thug, and a gangster. I knew he was probably responsible for the deaths of more Americans than anyone I’d interrogated in that guesthouse. And I knew he had a wealth of information about the insurgency and the men who led it. He also knew that I knew who he was and what he was doing. He had absolutely zero motivation to cooperate.
On the other hand, I was nothing but motivated. I not only wanted everything that he could tell me, I also had something to prove. I was determined to make up for the serious mistake of not recommending the raid that had brought him in. I had to break him.
But I couldn’t. I realized what I was up against when, after an hour and a half, all that I’d gotten him to admit was his name. The next four hours were filled with endless repetitions of the same bullshit story: he hadn’t seen any of his family since before the war; he had no involvement with the insurgency or with anyone who did; he spent his days hunting birds. He didn’t blink an eye when I called him a liar and a terrorist and a shitbag or when I promised him that he’d never get out of prison while I was still alive. I got the feeling he was actually enjoying this battle of wills. It was a point of pride not to show fear or doubt or guilt.
The grinding interrogation went on all day. Trying to catch him in an inconsistency was pointless. Since he was telling me nothing to begin with, there was nothing for him to contradict. I wanted to hear about Izzecki, the kid who had turned him in, but knew better than to reveal that I had that information. Izzecki’s name never came up, despite my best efforts to lead Farris Yasin in that direction. There were other questions that I couldn’t ask. Who the hell was Izzecki, anyway? How did he know where Farris was? Why did he turn him in? I was convinced that the stories he had told about the insurgent leader being his best friend were lies. Nothing Farris was saying or not saying was changing my mind. But I couldn’t figure out what the connection between the two men might be.
Eight hours later I had still not gotten a single piece of useful information. I even tried confronting him with the man whose house he was hiding in. He’d also been rolled up in the raid. I pointed out small discrepancies between their stories.
“He’s scared,” Farris said smugly. “He wants to please you. He will say whatever lies he thinks you want to hear.”
At 1500 I was called out of the interrogation room. There were two men at the gate, Kelly informed me. They needed to talk to me right away.
“Who are they?” I asked. I was in no mood to deal with random walk-ins.
“Two Kurds,” Kelly replied. “They’re looking for you. They say you told them to come back when they found Radman Ibrahim. They’re telling us he’s in Hudaytha and will be there until tomorrow morning.”
That got my attention. These were obviously the same two Kurds that had been working as sources with Chris before he left. They had come back now, with the intelligence I’d sent them out to get: the location of one of the top Al-Muslits and a twelve-hour window in which to launch the raid. Suddenly, my luck was changing. The exhausting day I’d just spent questioning Farris Yasin for information was now moving in a whole other direction.
“What do you think?” one of the terps asked me as we went to talk to the Kurds. “Are these guys for real?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” I answered grimly, “but last night the MPs picked up Farris Yasin on a hit I turned down. If these two guys told me they dreamed where Radman was, I’d recommend we go.”
After a thorough debriefing I was convinced that the sources were telling the truth. A consultation with Bam Bam convinced him, too and the raid was quickly put together. This was turning out to be one of the busiest and most eventful nights of my tour in Tikrit. And I wasn’t even factoring in the OU–A&M game that was going on at the same time.
Two hours later, the shooters had left on the raid that would hopefully roll up Radman. I returned to Farris Yasin, this time bringing with me his young brother, Ahmed Yasin. Ahmed repeated everything he had told me earlier, especially about Farris being an active member of the insurgency, but once again the result was negligible. I wasn’t getting anywhere.
But I still had hopes for the unfolding raid. Taking a well-deserved break from Farris, I returned to the house and went directly to the room the team used as an office. As I entered, Kelly, who was crouched at the radio, jumped up.
“Jackpot!” he shouted. “They got him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. At that point, I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
“That was Bam Bam,” he replied, pointing to the radio. “He wouldn’t call if he wasn’t sure.”
I let myself breathe again. “When will they be back? When can I start interrogating Radman?”
“Well,” Kelly said hesitantly. “That’s sort of an issue.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean an ‘issue’?”
“Hudaytha is pretty far west from here,” he explained. “We had to do the hit with our team in Baghdad. We drove out, but they came in on choppers. They’re going to fly Radman back to BIAP with them.”
My heart sank. “That’s a huge mistake, Kelly,” I protested. “They don’t even know who he is. I don’t want Radman because he’s a bad guy. I want him because of what he can tell me. He can lay out the entire insurgency here in Tikrit. He might even lead us to Saddam.”
“It’s a logistical issue,” Kelly said with a shrug. “Bam Bam’s trying to get it straightened out, but they may want to keep him for a few days. I’ll try to get him back here for you as soon as I can.”
We were interrupted by the radio. A message was coming in from the returning team: We have the PC. It was shorthand for “Precious Cargo.”
“What do you know,” Kelly said. “I guess Bam Bam talked Baghdad into letting us have Radman after all.”
I leapt up and rushed back to the guesthouse, stopping long enough to get a few No-Doze from my kit. I’d been up so long now, I knew I’d need something to help keep me alert for the interrogation with my new High Value prisoner.
When, after a half hour, nobody had showed up for the interrogation, I went out looking for the operators who would be escorting Radman. I ran into Bam Bam coming down the path.
“Did you get my message?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Yes,” I said anxiously. “Where is he? I’m ready to get started.”
“Oh, I was just messing with you,” Bam Bam replied, his smile turning into a grin. “They took him to Baghdad. It wasn’t my choice. I knew you’d be pissed.”
Bam Bam had gotten me good. As I walked back to the house, deflated and discouraged, I felt the No-Doze starting to kick in. It was going to be a long and useless night.
Chapter 10