by Eric Maddox
“Luay,” I asked, “how many meetings did you sit through with your brother and his group when they planned attacks to kill Americans?”
“Too many,” he replied.
“When was the last one?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“Who was at that meeting with your brother?”
“Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Khudayr.”
“Were they at every meeting?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Turn around, Luay,” I told him.
Fear flashed on his face when he realized we were not alone. He pivoted in his chair to see Muhammad Khudayr, gagged and glaring at him. He had witnessed Luay give incriminating information.
“Luay,” I continued, “who is that man?”
“Muhammad Khudayr,” he whispered.
I had Luay taken out of the room. He could barely walk on his shaking legs. I sat back down in front of the prisoner.
“Obviously Luay has been helping me,” I continued, sarcastically stating the obvious. “Now that you know, I can’t allow you to leave here. That would put his life in danger. There is only one thing you can do to change the situation. Tell me where to find Muhammad Ibrahim. If you do that, then I’ll know you’re on our side. Just like Luay.” He needed to understand that I had him where I wanted him. If he tried to retaliate against Luay, I would let it be known that he had helped us capture Muhammad Ibrahim. If he did cooperate then he’d have a vested interest in keeping it a secret—a secret he would share with Luay. “Do I make myself clear?” I asked to drive the point home.
A long pause followed, as he thought over his shrinking options. “I have heard of Muhammad Ibrahim,” he admitted at last. “But I do not know him.”
I left the room again, this time returning with Muslit, Muhammad Ibrahim’s son. He still had a hood over his head, but I lifted it just enough for Muhammad Khudayr to recognize his face. For the first time since the interrogation began, I could see his composure began to crack. I took Muslit away.
“I know you know who that is,” I said when I returned. I paused for a minute, as if considering my own options. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” I continued. “I’m thinking that I’ll bring Muslit back in here to have a look at you. Then I’ll make sure that everyone gets the message that Muhammad Ibrahim’s son is going to spend the next fifty years in prison because of information you provided. I wonder how that will affect Muhammad Ibrahim’s feelings toward you?” The tactic was a long shot, but I was willing to try anything.
“Muhammad Ibrahim has no regard for his son,” he spat back.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I wonder how he’d feel if he knew you sent his close friends to prison for the rest of their lives, too.”
“What friends?” he asked almost involuntarily.
“Basim Latif, Thamir Al-Asi, Abu Drees. I have them all in custody. I can put them away forever, and get everyone to believe that it was because of you. Would you like me to bring them in here?”
He shook his head but said nothing. We were stalemated. And there was a clock ticking loudly in the back of my head. “Muhammad Khudayr,” I said, trying another angle, “I know you are lying to me because you think I am unsure of my information. But you are wrong. I know everything about you. I know all the crimes you have committed. And I know that the only way you can escape punishment is to take me to Muhammad Ibrahim.”
“If I take you to him, he will kill me.” We were making progress, even if it was agonizingly slow. At the beginning of the interrogation, the prisoner had denied even knowing Muhammad Ibrahim. Now he was telling me how afraid he was of the man. His fear was well founded. If it were discovered that he was cooperating with us, his life and the life of his family would be in jeopardy. I needed to find a way to help him with that problem.
“I tell you what,” I offered. “You take me to Muhammad Ibrahim and I’ll make sure that everyone knows that Muslit, his son, was the one that helped capture him. He’s scheduled to be shipped off to Guantánamo Bay in a few days. Once he’s gone, we can blame it all on him. You’ll be in the clear.” This was pure bullshit. I had no idea what was going to happen to Muslit. Since he wasn’t actively involved in the insurgency, my guess was that he would be released sooner or later. But I needed to convince Muhammad Khudayr that he would have a way to protect himself and his relatives from Muhammad Ibrahim’s revenge.
“If that happened, he would kill his son,” the prisoner replied. “He would find a way. He will kill anyone who betrays him.”
“Tell me where he is,” I urged. “And he won’t be able to kill anybody. As long as he stays out there he is still a threat, even to your family, especially now that you have been arrested.”
Muhammad Khudayr’s face sagged and his shoulders slumped. I held my breath. I had seen those signs many times, just before a prisoner starts to break. “He was at my house,” he replied in a tired voice.
“When?”
“Last night.”
How could that be possible? How could we keep missing this guy? Either he was the luckiest bad guy in the world or I was the unluckiest interrogator.
Muhammad Khudayr turned to my terp John and spat out a string of Arabic. “Eric,” John said slowly, “he is saying that Muhammad Ibrahim was at the house during the raid.”
That just wasn’t possible, I told myself. The shooters who had done the hit knew who he was. They had the same photo I had. They couldn’t have missed one of the most wanted men in Iraq.
But they hadn’t missed him. If what Muhammad Khudayr was telling was the truth, then we had actually gotten him.
My mind flashed to the other detainees that had been rounded up in the raid. I had assumed that Muhammad Khudayr was the only prize. Every stage of the hunt so far had been intricate and difficult. One capture led to another and then to another. We had always taken one painstaking step at a time. And it had always seemed that the bad guys were one step ahead of us. Was it possible that we had just taken a giant leap?
“Keep an eye on him,” I said to John. I jumped up and bolted out of the room. I ran to the cell where the remaining detainees were being held.
“I need this door open now!” I told the guard as I pushed past him into the room. Crossing to the first prisoner, I lifted his hood. There was no resemblance to Muhammad Ibrahim. The same was true of the second detainee. The third seemed no more promising. The man in the photo I carried was slim and fit. I could see immediately that the last prisoner had a belly that lapped over his belt buckle. But when I lifted the hood, I didn’t need to raise it any further than his chin. He had a distinctive dimple. I would have known it anywhere.
“You’re Muhammad Ibrahim,” I said numbly, without even considering my words. “I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
He said something in Arabic. The guard outside the cell door translated for me. “He says that you are the interrogator in the blue shirt.” I later found out that I had gained a reputation in Tikrit for that shirt. Since I wore it practically every day, it made me easily identifiable. There had even been, I was told, a bounty out for the American in the blue shirt.
I was sure that I had the man I’d been hunting for so many weeks. It didn’t seem possible that in the end, it would have been as easy as walking into a prison cell and picking him out. But that’s how it happened, and in that moment I had a sudden rush of hope. We had tracked up the ladder, through the ranks of street thugs and informants and former bodyguards and insurgent lieutenants. We had penetrated their network to virtually its highest level. We had captured scores of bad guys and maybe saved hundreds of lives in the process. If we could do all that, maybe we could take this last step. Maybe Muhammad Ibrahim really could take us to Saddam.
But first I had to be absolutely certain that this was the man I was after. With so many dead ends and blind alleys, I’d become accustomed to last-minute screwups. I led the prisoner out into the hallway and left him with the guard. Then I dashed back to where Basim
and the others were waiting. I grabbed the driver and took him to his cell. Then I signaled for the guard to bring out Muhammad Ibrahim. As he stood in front of the cell door, I raised his hood just high enough for Basim to see what I had seen: that unmistakable chin.
The instant he saw it, Basim leapt up and backed into the corner, as far away from the powerful Hamaya as he could get. He gestured frantically for Muhammad Ibrahim to be taken away. There was a look of stark terror on his face. I gestured to the guard, and when he had taken the prisoner out of sight, I turned to Basim.
“Is that him?” I asked.
Basim just nodded. He was sobbing and muttering under his breath.
John, listening to the driver, smiled. “He thinks you are one bad motherfucker, Eric,” he translated.
I looked at Basim, trembling and tear-stained. Our eyes met as he said something else. “You are close,” John translated. “You are so close.”
“Thank him for me,” I replied. “Thank him for his help.” I reached out and we shook hands. It was the last time I ever saw Basim Latif.
Chapter 18
BANGING ON THE DOOR
0506 13DEC2003
It was just after 0500. The admiral’s plane would be leaving at 0800, but Lee and I had been told to be at the flight line at 0700. That gave me two hours to interrogate Muhammad Ibrahim. I may have been in the zone, but this was a man who, I believed, reported directly to Saddam. He would have a lot of secrets to hide and a lot of incentive to hide them. I had my work cut out for me.
I took Basim, Muhammad Khudayr, and the other detainees back to their cells. I wasn’t going to use them to convince or manipulate this prisoner into talking. This time it was just going to be Muhammad Ibrahim and me. I would be facing the man I considered to be the second most valuable target in Iraq, and I had one hundred and twenty minutes to find out what he knew. I could go in one of two directions. I could try to work down the link diagram and get the locations of the men who followed his orders, all the brothers and cousins and friends who made up his insurgent network. Or I could move up the last rung of the ladder to the man who gave orders to Muhammad Ibrahim. I didn’t think twice. I’d never have this opportunity again. I was going to swing for the fence.
“My name is Eric,” I told the prisoner as we sat face-to-face. “I’ve been looking for you a long time, Muhammad Ibrahim. I need you to listen to me very carefully. You and I will be talking about just one thing: the exact location of Saddam Hussein.”
He looked from me to John and back again. Then he smiled, exposing his tobacco-stained teeth. “I don’t know where he is,” he said.
“You know exactly where he is. I know you do. That’s why I’ve been looking for you. That’s why I’ve gone after your entire family. That’s why I’ve brought in every one of your friends. I haven’t been looking for Saddam. I have been looking for the man who is going to take me to Saddam. That man is you.”
“You give me too much credit,” he replied, the smile still on his face.
“I’m not the one giving you the credit. Everyone I’ve talked to gives you the credit. They all say that it’s you who’s running the insurgency. They tell me that you are a very important person, very well respected and very much feared. It’s because of that respect and fear that Saddam picked you to lead his insurgency. They tell me that you were the one that handed out Saddam’s money. They tell that you have men in Samarra and Fallujah. They tell me that Radman worked directly for you.”
“Where is Radman?” he asked. I knew that he was testing me. He wanted to find out the limits of my information. Would I tell him the truth or try to bluff him?
“Radman is dead,” I told him.
He didn’t seem surprised. Instead he sat staring at me, waiting to see what I would do next.
“Now that I have you, I’m going to go after the rest of your family,” I continued. “I will go after every brother, son, cousin, and nephew you have. You are about to bring down hell on your family and it won’t be over until we find Saddam. If you don’t tell me where he is, maybe they will. You can stop that right now. Give me Saddam and I stop hunting them.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said contemptuously.
“Look at me and listen carefully. You will give me Saddam. When you do I will allow you to leave here a free man. I will do that because you have given me the most wanted man in the world. When that happens, I will help you. Until that happens, I can’t help you. There is only one thing you need to think about and that’s how you will be able to go home. I’m the only one who can make that happen.”
“Even if I knew where Saddam was and if I took you to him, they would know it. They would kill my family. You could not stop them.”
For the first time, the prisoner was giving me a glimpse of what his terms for talking might be. He wanted protection for himself and his family. We had gone from outright denial to conditional cooperation. If he knew where Saddam was. If he took us to him. That one little word made all the difference.
“Who are ‘they,’ Muhammad Ibrahim?” I asked. “Who’s going to come after you when Saddam is gone? You are running his insurgency. Without you, Saddam has no power. Those men who are loyal to him will see that. They will stop fighting. They will respect and fear you even more because you have brought him down. Listen to me. This country is going to be rebuilt from the ground up. The old regime will never give up as long as Saddam is still out there. When we capture him, with or without your cooperation, they will know that it’s all over. They’ll give up the struggle. You can go home. Your family will be safe. Iraq will have a new beginning.”
As the minutes ticked down, I expanded on the vision of the nation free from Saddam. At regular intervals he would try to interrupt. He couldn’t help me, he insisted. He didn’t know where Saddam was hiding. But I just kept at it. I hammered home the fear and danger that existed for him, his family and his country if Saddam weren’t captured. Then I contrasted it with the safety and security they would enjoy if the dictator were run to ground. I made it as personal as I could. It was a matter of duty, I told him. He had a responsibility to his family and to Iraq. The old rule of terror and intimidation was over. A new world was coming. He could help to make that happen. And in the process he would guarantee the future of the entire Al-Muslit clan.
It was nearly 0645. “If you don’t help me, Muhammad,” I told him, “I can’t help you. The only life your family will ever know is being on the run. They will be fugitives and outlaws. And your country will be torn apart. It’s up to you.”
If anything I was saying got through, he didn’t let me know. He just stared at me without expression. Without an outward sign, I had no idea if he was even close to breaking. But I was surer than ever that, if he wanted to, he could take me to Saddam.
Lee came to the door and silently tapped his wristwatch. It was time to go. “Muhammad,” I said, “I am going to put you back into your cell. No one is going to come to talk to you again. You are going to be taken away to spend the rest of your life in a dark prison by yourself. Your family is going to be hunted like animals. Saddam can’t help them. No one can help them, except you, right here, right know. Now that we have captured you, you are of no use to Saddam. He will not help you and he won’t take care of your family. This is your only chance to help them.”
I waited for him to respond. He just glared at me.
“You have one way out,” I said, standing up and signaling to John that the interrogation was over. “You know what that way is. When you are back in your cell, think hard. Think about your family. Think about your country. Then, when you change your mind and decide to take me to Saddam, I want you to bang on your cell door. Do it as loud as you can, otherwise I’m not going to hear you. And if I don’t hear you, you will never leave that room a free man. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “There is only thing I want to hear from you: the location of Saddam. Otherw
ise, don’t say anything.” I turned to leave, then stopped and faced him again. “Just bang on the cell door, Muhammad. That’s all you have to do.”
I left, slamming the wooden door on my way out.
At a little before 0700, I found Lee back at the prison.
“I need to get an analyst to let someone know that we had actually caught Muhammad Ibrahim in that raid,” I told him. “I also need to give Kelly a call in Tikrit.”
“Make it quick,” Lee said. “We’re supposed to be there already.”
I hurried to the TOC—the Tactical Operations Center—and found the only analyst on duty. I gave him as much information as I could, as quickly as possible, then I e-mailed Kelly. He needed to know that we had Muhammad Ibrahim and that, so far, he hadn’t given Saddam up. By the time I finished it was 0710. I was running late. Lee was already waiting in a truck outside the prison. It was only then that I realized that I didn’t have my gear.
“Lee, I haven’t packed yet. Give me a couple of minutes.”
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you over there. We’ve got to make sure we’re on the admiral’s plane.”
We took off for my tent, raising a cloud of dust behind us. For the first time since I had gotten news of the raid I had a chance to catch my breath. The satisfaction of having finally confronted Muhammad Ibrahim was mixed with the regret of not having gotten him to talk. It would be up to someone else now to finish the job.
“So,” Lee said as we bounced along toward the airstrip, “you got your guy.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’ve been looking for that son-of-a-bitch for three months.”
“What did you do to him, Eric?”
I turned to Lee. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything to him.”