See Something, Say Nothing

by Philip Haney

  Along with my twenty years of overseas experience, I brought an affinity for languages, cultures, and the meaning of names. From my father came a natural inclination to carefully observe the world around me.

  ANT TRAILS

  For more than twenty years prior to 9/11, I worked directly with farmers and their crops as an entomologist. I earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of California–Davis, and a master of science degree from the University of California–Riverside, with specialties in biological control of crop pests, agricultural economic analysis, and in particular, the behavior of ants.

  There are two primary qualities a good entomologist must possess. The first is the ability to observe behavior. Animals, such as ants, for example, move around. But they have a nest, and if you can piece together their behavior and find the trail, it will always lead you to the nest.

  That’s counterterrorism in a few words. Find the trail; go to the nest. And then keep doing it, over and over again.

  The other quality is attention to detail. There are more bugs in the world than any other kind of animal. If I, as an agricultural entomologist, mistakenly believe it’s the bug with one hair rather than two hairs that is eating the potatoes and advise a farmer to spray accordingly, he can lose his crop and possibly even his farm. I can’t make mistakes.

  So, it wasn’t such a stretch for me to transition to a subject matter expert in counterterrorism.

  In 1984, I became the manager of the Fillmore Citrus Protective District, a self-contained, ten-thousand-acre area that in the 1920s became one of the first in the world to implement pest management based on biological control – “good” bugs eating “bad” bugs.

  The job required an unusual combination of scientific knowledge and intuitive artistry that can’t necessarily be taught. Along with a thorough knowledge of the crop’s annual cycle, you have to discern when and how to apply the beneficial insects, the good bugs. The art and science of biological control also requires carefully rearing, collecting, and keeping healthy the good bugs until they can be released in the field.

  One of the biggest problems Fillmore had was an ant imported from Argentina that thrived in California. A highly organized species, it ran in concentrated trails. Once I discovered the ants’ secret – how they were exploiting low-hanging branches for nesting during the colder months – it revolutionized the whole district. Their productivity and quality went up, and their costs went down.

  I published a paper on my major breakthrough in a journal and ended up presenting it at conferences in South America, where it was enthusiastically received.

  Meanwhile, I got the idea to do a survey of ants and citrus worldwide.

  From all over the world, I received boxes with wax seals and string containing ants from citrus orchards. Next I made a spreadsheet and categorized the ants, then published a paper titled Identification, Ecology and Control of the Ants in Citrus: A World Survey, which I presented four years later at the Sixth International Citrus Congress in Tel Aviv, Israel.6 (I still have the collection of preserved ants from citrus orchards in more than thirty countries.)

  My success led to a position at the University of California–Riverside, where I wrote a grant to the California Energy Commission to find ways of reducing energy consumption in the citrus-growing industry. My colleagues said, “Haney, you’re nuts. You’re not going to get this.” But I was completely confident that if I turned it in, I would win the grant. And I did.

  It became the Crown Butte Project in the three largest farming counties in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which found ways to reduce energy and improve crop quality, and input costs, saving some $8 million.

  ONE FACE

  Before 9/11, our three legacy agencies in DHS were autonomous, with little interaction, even though we were working within the same, small enclosed areas of the nation’s international entry ports.

  Now, suddenly, we were all on the same team, wearing the same uniform, and learning a new motto, “One Face at the Border,” or OFAB.7

  Introduced by Secretary Ridge on September 3, 2003, the intent of OFAB was to “eliminate the previous separation of immigration, customs, and agriculture functions at US air, land, and seaports of entry, and institute a unified border inspection process.”8

  It wasn’t nearly as easy to do as it was to say it, but we made progress and learned to work together, gradually adjusting to a new post-9/11 mission and to an entirely new management structure with many unfamiliar faces.

  Apparently, my colleagues in legacy agriculture thought I was qualified to help lead us through this uncharted territory, so they elected me as president of our local union, known as the National Association of Agriculture Employees (NAAE).

  I didn’t run for the position and didn’t even know that they were holding elections. But one afternoon in late December 2003, my colleagues came out to our work area in the Federal Inspection Services (FIS), known as “the Floor,” and surprised me with the news that I was their brand-new union president.

  I served as president for about a year, until the Atlanta branch of the NAAE was disbanded and we were all absorbed into the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). First organized by a few IRS employees in 1938, the NTEU currently represents more than 150,000 federal employees in thirty-one federal agencies and departments.

  On September 15, 2004, my post-merger background clearance came through, which meant that I would now have access to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS. Before the merger, only US Customs officers could use TECS, but now personnel in all three legacy agencies would have access to the same law-enforcement information.

  After the NAAE was disbanded in October 2004 and my term as union president came to an end, I was selected by management to serve as acting supervisor, where I remained through March 2005. During this time, I was given a commendation letter, a time-off award, and two cash awards from CBP management. I was commended for receiving a “superior” rating in my annual evaluation for fiscal year 2003–04; for my “outstanding performance,” which was “vital in the agency’s mission”; and for my “continued vigilance against terrorism.”

  “Your dedication to the mission is commendable and appreciated by the Port of Atlanta,” the letter read.

  We were now three years past the events of 9/11, and DHS had been operating as a stand-alone agency for less than two years. The language in the award letters reflected an agency still focused on terrorism as a mission, and I was commended by CBP management for being vigilant and dedicated to that objective.

  CBP’s vision statement is:

  To serve as the premier law enforcement agency, enhancing the Nation’s safety, security, and prosperity through collaboration, innovation, and integration.

  Its core values are:

  VIGILANCE is how we ensure the safety of all Americans. We are continuously watchful and alert to deter, detect and prevent threats to our nation. We demonstrate courage and valor in the protection of our nation.

  SERVICE TO COUNTRY is embodied in the work we do. We are dedicated to defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States. The American people have entrusted us to protect the homeland and defend liberty.

  INTEGRITY IS OUR CORNERSTONE. We are guided by the highest ethical and moral principles. Our actions bring honor to ourselves and our agency.9

  I took our founding vision statement and all three of our core values very seriously.

  “TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA”

  After the end of my tour of duty as an acting supervisor in March 2005, I was appointed as the first CBPAS scheduling officer at the Port of Atlanta, where I served until October 2005. As part of our ongoing “One Face” effort, it would be the first time a legacy PPQ officer was pulled away from our core mission duties and reassigned to a team that was entirely separate from agriculture.

  As it turned out, it was the first step toward my rapid transition into counterterrorism, and I never went back to agriculture.
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br />   Together with my colleagues, former customs officer Rickey Ferguson and former INS officer Sonia Lewis, we soon created the first unified work schedule, which helped synchronize the entire port. As schedulers, we became familiar with where everyone else was stationed in the floor on any given day.

  Since we worked together on the same schedule, we became very efficient. Even though there were always a few changes to make before the next day’s roster was sent up to management, we also had some downtime, which I began using to conduct research into current events in the “War on Terror” and to prepare intelligence briefings, which I would then send up the management chain of command.

  The first briefing I sent to management was an analysis of Osama bin Laden’s October 30, 2004, speech to the “people of America concerning the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan [9/11] and … the war and its causes and results.”10

  The five main points in the briefing were:

  1. The historical and theological context of the passages from the Quran that bin Laden used have implications for our long-term fight against terrorism.

  2. The speech is a clear, worldwide call for long-term action – years into the future – by a personality who has heroic standing and great influence in the Islamic world. This goal will be accomplished through Jihad.

  3. The speech included an “Invitation” to the non-Islamic world (specifically, the United States and Israel) to repent and turn to Islam.

  4. The speech appealed to an intense desire for the global Islamic community to return to its former time of dominance in the Middle East (and, ultimately, the world), and that this goal would be accomplished through Jihad.

  5. The primary target for this message was not really the West – it was the Islamic world, as Osama called all Muslims to unify and return to the pure faith of Islam (Salafi).

  Other briefings that I sent up to management in 2005 included one titled Global Jihad & International Trends and two others that analyzed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Washington, DC, group that three years later was revealed in federal court to have been established as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood.

  I got a lot of positive feedback from the briefings, which culminated in a memo to top management on July 18, 2005, requesting that they meet with me regarding the information I had developed.

  “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH YOU?”

  The invitation resulted in a meeting with several top managers at the district field office on July 28, 2005, in which we discussed how I could be of best use within the agency.

  It had become clear to my superiors at that time that I had become an unclassified hybrid.

  “Mr. Haney, what are we going to do with you?” asked Robert Gomez, the district field office director.

  Officially, I was an agriculture officer, but I was also doing the intelligence work of an armed Customs and Border Protection officer.

  For starters, they attached me to the newly formed CBP Intelligence Implementation Group (CIIG), and on August 2, 2005, I attended the inaugural CIIG meeting.

  As we all listened to opening comments by Atlanta port director Stephen Kremer – which emphasized his intention for the port to focus on long-range analysis and antiterrorist-related activities – some of my colleagues noticed that I was taking notes in shorthand. They immediately designated me as the official notetaker for the CIIG meetings.

  During the inaugural CIIG meeting, Kremer also said one of our goals was to make the focus on long-range analysis and antiterrorist activities a “lighthouse” for ports across the country, an aim that resonated with me.

  Meanwhile, by early 2005, the war in Iraq was winding down, and events in Afghanistan were evolving rapidly. On February 4, 2005, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, announced that fifteen thousand US troops would leave Iraq within a month.11

  In Afghanistan, riots that initially started over rumors that US personnel had desecrated a Quran turned into the biggest anti-American protests since 9/11. The same rioters also demanded that the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai reject US intentions to establish a permanent military presence in the country.12

  One of the reports I prepared during this period was titled “Green Tide Rising – Iraq Lost,” which observed, “Despite the good that we have done in delivering the people of Iraq from the cruelty of Saddam Hussein, it is clear to me now that (in the end), we will ultimately … fail in our attempt to create a free, democratic government in Iraq.”

  I wrote:

  The truth is the Shiite Jihadists have already taken over the southern region of the country (Basra). This is with the direct assistance of Iran. They are already imposing strict sharia law on the people, and are led by Muqtada Ali Sadr.

  Their grip on the people will only tighten, and our own government cannot tell the difference between the Shiite Jihadists and those who support the democracy. They have infiltrated the police training program (managed by the British Army), and the local government at every level.

  It is very likely that there will be civil strife (war) between the Shiite and Sunni factions, with larger countries (such as Iran on one side & Saudi Arabia and Syria on the other side) supporting them for their own advantage.

  At the same time, I also followed reports that madrassas, or Quranic schools, in Pakistan were providing training and refuge for jihad fighters who were carrying out antigovernment attacks inside Afghanistan. Despite Pakistan’s official denials, there were enough details leaking out for me to corroborate this emerging trend and to advise my colleagues during our weekly muster meetings to be on alert for individuals coming from that part of the world.

  It was also one of the main reasons I started focusing on the global Deobandi movement and Salafi Islamic groups, such as Tablighi Jamaat, back in early 2005.

  DEEP RESEARCH

  Another outcome of our district field office meeting was to have me start focusing on “lookouts,” meaning the evaluation of passengers before they arrive in the United States, and conducting secondary inspections, face-to-face interviews with passengers suspected of terrorist activity. To do this, I had to be reassigned again, this time to the Passenger Analysis Unit (PAU), where I remained from October 2005 through October 2006.

  The PAU is a special CBP team within most of the ports around the country that focuses on prescreening and in-depth analysis of passengers seeking to enter America who may have a possible connection to terrorist activity.

  During this same time period, I also cooperated with our Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) liaison to put together weekly “muster topics,” with titles such as “The Muslim Brotherhood & Global Jihad.” These short briefings on specific topics were given to the entire port during our weekly muster meetings.

  Apparently, I was so successful on the PAU team that on November 1, 2006, management established an entirely new specialty group called the Intelligence Review Unit (IRU), where, along with two other colleagues and CBP supervisor Joseph M. Rogers, we were authorized to conduct “deep research” into cases, based on interviews with passengers who had initially been referred for additional secondary screening and were found to have potential links to terrorism.

  The IRU was a great success. Among the many difficult cases we worked on was a seven-month project that focused on the Hamas network in the United States. It led to nearly six hundred law-enforcement actions, along with many hundreds of responses from CBP colleagues in ports around the country.

  Our comprehensive report on Hamas was also singled out by Aida M. Perez, director of the ICE Office of Intelligence for Southeast Field Intelligence Unit, and sent to every resident agent in charge (RAC) and special agent in charge (SAC) in the country.

  This recognition also led to an offer from one of my colleagues in ICE for a temporary-duty assignment at the DHS Office of Intelligence and Operations Coordination (OIOC).

  Management at my port, however, never even acknowledged the offer had been made.

  In hi
ndsight, it would be the first of many similar instances during my career with CBP, most without ever receiving the courtesy of a yes-or-no answer, or even a simple acknowledgment of the request.

  Meanwhile, I also began to participate in secondary interviews with passengers coming from known hot spots in the Middle East or Asia. This early experience prepared me for the numerous interviews I would conduct in subsequent years.

  All of the promotions, reassignments, and recognition from colleagues happened while I was still a CBP agricultural specialist. I had not yet converted to an 1895-series armed CBP officer. I mention it here simply because my hybrid status soon became a real problem.

  3

  SHADOW LINE

  In his World War I–era novella, the great British-Polish author Joseph Conrad wrote of a “shadow line,” a twilight threshold in which a major transformation takes place. Before reaching the shadow line, there are harbingers of what lies on the other side.

  On June 21, 2006, members of a group that later was designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted coconspirator in a plot to fund the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were invited to participate in a VIP behind-the-scenes tour of security at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

  The representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations were shown the point of entry, customs stations, secondary screening rooms, and interview rooms. CBP agents described for the CAIR leaders specific features of the high-risk passenger lookout system.

  According to an August 2006 news report, Brian Humphrey, Customs and Border Protection’s executive director of field operations, “assured CAIR officials that agents do not single out Muslim passengers for special screening and that they must undergo a mandatory course in Muslim sensitivity training.” Agents are taught in this course that Muslims consider jihad an “internal struggle against sin” and not holy warfare.1