Reign of Terror

by Spencer Ackerman

  Comey warned Bush: James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (New York: Flatiron, 2018), 94–96. Gellman, Angler, 312–26.

  Hayden accurately observed: Kollar-Kotelly, order from July 14, 2004, partially declassified by the Director of National Intelligence in November 2013: www.dni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDPRTT%201.pdf, accessed April 16, 2019. The judge noted that the NSA’s application “seeks a much broader type of collection than other pen register/trap and trace applications,” but ultimately concluded that “the proposed collection involves a form of both pen register and trap and trace surveillance.” NSA internal STELLARWIND history, 39. Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 90.

  Such a simulacrum of law: Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 87.

  If “we fail”: “Testimony from the Joint Intelligence Committee,” New York Times, October 17, 2002.

  A White House staffer: Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 89.

  More than four thousand marines: James Dao, “American Marines Land Near Kandahar,” New York Times, November 25, 2001. DOD News Briefing—Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, December 6, 2001, transcript available at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/dod_brief114.asp. Spencer Ackerman, “The Afghan Taliban Peace Deal Might Have Been Had Many Years and Thousands of Lives Ago,” Daily Beast, February 29, 2020.

  Berntsen witnessed the: Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander (New York: Crown, 2006), Kindle location 7172.

  Berntsen’s ally at CIA headquarters: Baker, Days of Fire, 179–80.

  Rather than concluding: Bergan, “The Account of How We Nearly Caught Bin Laden in 2001,” The New Republic, December 30, 2009. Mary Anne Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora,” New York Times Magazine, September 11, 2005. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Now, November 30, 2009. Bernten and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, Kindle location 7128–8405.

  He had provided the staff: Declassified executive summary, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” (“The Torture Report”), December 9, 2014, 54. Available at www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf. This is a principal source for this passage.

  A man known as Abu Zubaydah: Abu Zubaydah denied being an associate of bin Laden in his March 27, 2007, Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. He said instead that he was a facilitator for travel to a terrorist training camp in eastern Afghanistan ahead of 9/11, rather than al-Qaeda’s commanding officer, as alleged against him in a nonjudicial proceeding. His lucidity, even through translation, makes it difficult to credit the portrait painted of Abu Zubaydah by Ron Suskind in his One Percent Doctrine, which claims Abu Zubaydah is borderline incapacitated mentally; Abu Zubaydah refers to himself having too “big [a] name” for al-Qaeda to have made him a soldier. Noteworthy as well is that official government papers on Abu Zubaydah would quietly back off claims that he was formally a member of al-Qaeda, consistent with his 2007 denial of the same. The transcript was partially declassified in 2016 and is available at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/15/world/document-CSRT-transcripts-high-value-ACLU-FOIA.html, accessed April 19, 2019.

  One of the FBI interrogators: Confirmed by James Mitchell in James Mitchell with Bill Harlow, Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America (New York: Crown Forum, 2016), 37–41, where he also suggests Abu Zubaydah manipulated Soufan. Also see Michael Isikoff, “Spin Wars: How a Bitter Feud between the CIA and FBI Stoked the Torture Debate,” Yahoo News, December 15, 2014.

  “Again and again”: Transcript of Abu Zubaydah’s 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal, 23–26. See Senate torture report, 410.

  Headquarters staff quickly: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, December 2014, 80–82.

  It made them rich: Mitchell concedes holding the contract but contends that the profits he reaped on it were “in the small single digits” after defraying costs such as payroll for a hundred-person staff and insurance. Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, 287–88.

  Mitchell, in his memoir: Julian Borger, “Chilling Role of ‘The Preacher’ Confirmed at CIA Waterboarding Hearing in Guantanamo,” Guardian, January 25, 2020.

  He “looked into the eyes”: The establishment of Islam postdates the Iron Age in the Middle East by nearly a thousand years. The Iron Age ended there around 550 BC, though Christian/pagan northern Europe was still in the Iron Age until about AD 800, at which point Islam was nearly two hundred years old and had become, on the Iberian peninsula, the center of European intellectual development.

  Mitchell described Abu Zubaydah: Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, 34. Mitchell does not pause to address how his comparison not only renders al-Qaeda on par with the Jedi, guardians of justice and freedom, but makes him either a Sith or part of the evil Empire.

  a mandate from Congress and Bush: Statement of Cofer Black, fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092602black.html.

  As Tenet indicated: See Michael J. Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight against Terrorism—From al Qa’ida to ISIS (New York: Twelve Books, 2015), 269, where Morell, a senior CIA analyst at the time, writes that when briefing congressional leadership on torture, “there was either approval or in some cases concern that CIA was not going far enough in trying to obtain information from detainees.” While Morell’s account serves the CIA’s interest in distributing blame, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein would later establish that the Senate Intelligence Committee knew little of substance during the Bush administration, few members of the congressional intelligence leadership demonstrated concerns for the rights of the detainees whom it was publicly known the CIA was holding.

  The CIA could use several: George Tenet, “Guidelines on Interrogations,” January 28, 2003, www.thetorturedatabase.org/document/cia-director-memo-guidelines-interrogations-conducted-pursuant-presidential-memorandum-noti?search_url=search/apachesolr_search&search_args=filters=tds_cck_field_doc_date:[2003-01-01T00:00:00Z%20TO%202004-01-01T00:00:00Z]%20tds_cck_field_doc_date:[2003-01-01T00:00:00Z%20TO%202003-02-01T00:00:00Z]%20sm_cck_field_doc_type:63%26solrsort=tds_cck_field_doc_release_date%20desc. It somehow averred that three-day diapering and three-day sleep deprivation were familiar FBI techniques.

  That left it with no choice: Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2004), 258.

  The CIA’s executive director: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, December 2014, 55.

  That was insufficient to reassure Tenet: See 18 USC 2340(A)(a), cited in Spencer Ackerman, “ ‘She Should Have Fought Back. Other People Did’: Inside Gina Haspel’s Black Site,” Daily Beast, May 9, 2018.

  Jay Bybee indemnified the CIA: Yoo’s opinion, with Jay Bybee, was dated August 1, 2002. The CIA had begun interrogating Abu Zubaydah months earlier, in April.

  irreversible psychological damage: Several ex-detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, surpassed that threshold. Mustafa al-Hawsawi in 2016 underwent corrective surgery for an anal prolapse stemming from what he says was his torture at the black sites. Khaled el-Masri, whom the CIA released on a case of mistaken identity after torturing him, has set fires and is said to have abandoned his family. Ammar al-Baluchi has told doctors at Guantanamo Bay of “terrifying anxiety” that prevents him from sleeping. No American court has recognized their right to seek redress, nor has the FBI or Justice Department, following Mueller’s 2002 decision in overruling Soufan, arrested or brought charges against any of their torturers.

  The report records that Nashiri: Cited in Ackerman, “ ‘She Should Have
Fought Back.’ ”

  Later Haspel took over: See Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, December 2014, 62–70. Spencer Ackerman, “Gina Haspel, Trump’s Pick to Lead the CIA, ‘Ran the Interrogation Program,’ Former CIA Lawyer Wrote,” Daily Beast, April 18, 2018. Rizzo is quoted in this story averring that the CIA official he wrote about in 2014, when it seemed to be unimportant, was Haspel. Two days after this story’s publication, and in the midst of Haspel’s nomination for CIA director, Rizzo publicly recanted that he had referenced Haspel at all and claimed a sudden burst of corrective memory.

  The CIA institutionalization: Spencer Ackerman, “CIA Photographed Detainees Naked Before Sending Them to Be Tortured,” Guardian, March 28, 2016. Thomas Frank, “Fatima Boudchar Was Bound, Gagged and Photographed Naked. John McCain Wants to Know If Gina Haspel’s Okay with That,” BuzzFeed, March 23, 2018.

  In February 2002, Bush: George W. Bush, “Humane Treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban Detainees,” memo, February 7, 2002, available at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/torturingdemocracy/documents/20020207-2.pdf.

  By the fall of 2002: Senate Armed Services Committee, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” April 22, 2009, xvii, www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Detainee-Report-Final_April-22-2009.pdf. Hereafter “SASC report.”

  “If the detainee dies”: SASC report, 54–55. Statement of Jonathan Fredman to the SASC, November 17, 2008, available at www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Jonathan-Fredman-to-SASC.pdf, accessed July 28, 2020.

  Benita Johnson remembered: Spencer Ackerman, “How Chicago Police Condemned the Innocent: A Trail of Coerced Confessions,” Guardian, February 19, 2015.

  Another detainee was sexually humiliated: Army Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt and Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow, “Investigation into FBI Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Detention Facility,” April 1, 2005. Collected in Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, eds. Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 99–105.

  Rumsfeld, who approved torture: SASC report, 96–98.

  “If you make this exception”: Jane Mayer, “The Memo,” The New Yorker, February 20, 2006.

  He claimed that the interrogators: Jamie Doward, Antony Barnett, Peter Beaumont, David Rose, and Mark Townsend, “The Leak that Revealed Bush’s Deep Obsession with Al-Jazeera,” Guardian, November 26, 2005.

  “virtually unknown in U.S. media circles”: Joel Campagna, “Sami al-Haj: The Enemy?” Committee to Protect Journalists, October 2006.

  But the U.S. eventually brought a teenaged: Michelle Shephard, Guantanamo’s Child (Toronto: Wiley, 2008). See also her Toronto Star articles “Report Slaps CSIS over Khadr,” July 15, 2009, and “In His Own Words: Omar Khadr,” projects.thestar.com/omar-khadr-in-his-own-words, accessed July 29, 2020.

  Mora’s insight was that: This is a riff off a line written by Adam Serwer: “Trumpism, Realized,” The Atlantic, June 20, 2018.

  Chapter Two: 9/11 and the Right

  “To those who scare”: Attorney General John Ashcroft, testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, December 6, 2001, transcript available at www.justice.gov/archive/ag/testimony/2001/1206transcriptsenatejudiciarycommittee.htm. See also Jim McGee, “Ex-FBI Officials Criticize Tactics on Terrorism,” Washington Post, November 28, 2001. Fox Butterfield, “Police Are Split on Questioning of Mideast Men,” New York Times, November 22, 2001. Unbylined, “Ashcroft Says to Question Thousands of Visitors,” CNN, November 13, 2001. Statement of the ACLU to the Senate Judiciary Committee, November 28, 2001, available at www.aclu.org/other/aclu-statement-senate-judiciary-committee-concerning-department-justice-anti-terrorism. Statement of CAIR, “Interviews of 5,000 Visa Holders Are Concern to Muslim Group,” press release, November 13, 2001, available at www.cair.com/press_releases/interviews-of-5000-visa-holders-are-concern-to-muslim-group.

  Liberal and left dissent: Andrew Sullivan, Times (London), September 16, 2001, linked to on Sullivan’s blog at web.archive.org/web/20090608041410/http://sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2001_09_01_dish_archive.html. See also Timothy Noah, “Al Gore, Andrew Sullivan, and ‘Fifth Column,’ ” Slate, December 2, 2002. Sullivan would apologize, numerous times, for the inflammatory “fifth column” reference. Stephen Miller, “Unpatriotic Dissent,” Duke Chronicle, February 6, 2006.

  “There is a religious war”: See, among others, Charles Krauthammer, “Holiday from History,” Washington Post, February 14, 2003. Pat Buchanan, speech to the Republican National Convention, August 17, 1992, transcript available at https://buchanan.org/blog/1992-republican-national-convention-speech-148.

  “Conservatives saw the savagery”: Patrick D. Healy, “Rove Criticizes Liberals on 9/11,” New York Times, June 23, 2005. Gallup, “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx, accessed August 7, 2020.

  “Victory in war”: Frederick Kagan, “The New Bolsheviks,” American Enterprise Institute, November 2005.

  “I will show how jihad violence”: Robert Spencer, “CBS Blocks the Truth about Islam,” Human Events, August 10, 2005.

  But in 1986: Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr., “Bush’s Life-Changing Year,” Washington Post, July 25, 1999.

  EPA chief Whitman: John F. Dickerson, “Confessions of a White House Survivor,” Time, January 10, 2004. Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

  Asked about it at a White House briefing: “Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer,” September 26, 2001, available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010926-5.html.

  One such conception: Draft 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, partially available at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb245/doc03_extract_nytedit.pdf. Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Ensuring No Rivals Develop,” New York Times, March 8, 1992.

  Any objection to invading: Neal B. Freeman, “NR Goes to War,” The American Spectator, August 4, 2006. Michiko Kakutani, “Personality, Ideology and Bush’s Terror Wars,” New York Times, June 20, 2006.

  Essayist Max Boot: Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam,” The New Yorker, November 19, 2001. In a lengthy and discursive essay, Lewis contends that bin Laden’s ire came not from any geopolitical or material condition, but from America satanically tempting Muslims away from fundamentalism. Lewis attributed 9/11 to a provocative weakness—America as a “paper tiger” in bin Laden’s eyes—and argued for overthrowing two regimes uninvolved in it. “In two countries, Iraq and Iran, where the regimes are strongly anti-American, there are democratic oppositions capable of taking over and forming governments.” When Lewis died, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former CIA director, called Lewis a kindred spirit from whom “a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East” derived. Lewis “believed, as I do, that Americans must be more confident in the greatness of our country, not less,” Pompeo said on May 20, 2018. Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard, October 15, 2001.

  National Review fired Coulter: Roger D. McGrath, “The Great Somali Welfare Hunt,” The American Conservative, November 18, 2002. Howard Kurtz, “National Review Cans Columnist Ann Coulter,” Washington Post, October 2, 2001.

  “If the Islamic law”: Interview with James Dobson, Larry King Live, CNN, September 5, 2003.

  CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper: Richard N. Ostling, “Jerry Falwell Calls Islam’s Prophet a ‘Terrorist’ in Television Interview,” Associated Press, October 3, 2002. “Anti-Islam,” Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, December 20, 2002.

  Boykin was never: Christianity Today editorial, “Outpaced by Islam?” Christianity Today, February 4, 2002, www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/february4/26.26.html. Richard Cimino, “ ‘No God in C
ommon’: American Evangelical Discourse on Islam after 9/11,” Review of Religious Research 47, no. 2 (December 2005), 162–74. Richard T. Cooper, “General Casts War in Religious Terms,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2003. Ted Olsen, “Should Christians Be Banned from the Military?” Christianity Today, October 16, 2003.

  Overthrowing the Taliban: Beth Henary, “Feminists v. the Taliban,” Weekly Standard, October 7, 2001.

  “What they abominate about ‘the West’ ”: Christopher Hitchens, “Against Rationalization,” The Nation, September 20, 2001.

  Jones lamented that evangelicals: Sandra Marquez, “FBI Says It Will Investigate Alleged Hate Crime in California,” Associated Press, March 5, 2003. Eric Carpenter, “An O.C.-Born Arab-American Teen Is Beaten, Stabbed by a Group with Apparent Ethnic Animus,” Orange County Register, March 4, 2003. Amanda Beck, “For All the Changes, Much Remains the Same; Teen Reaches Out to Community Groups, Rashid Alam Reflects on Life After February’s Hate-Crime Beating,” Yorba Linda Star/Orange County Register, October 16, 2003. Bob Jones, “Truth or CAIR,’ World magazine, March 22, 2003.

  For decades GOP politicians: Lou Marano, “Christians Rally for Israel in Washington,” United Press International, October 13, 2002.

  The Reverend Richard Cizik: Laurie Goldstein, “Seeing Islam as ‘Evil’ Faith, Evangelicals Seek Converts,” New York Times, May 27, 2003.

  Assistant Secretary Bill Burns: Warren P. Strobel, “Long-Classified Memo Surfaces Warning of ‘Perfect Storm’ from Invading Iraq,” Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2019.

  The burgeoning resistance: Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, “Intelligence Agencies Warned about Growing Local Insurgency in Late 2003,” McClatchy, February 28, 2006.

  “The CIA is a long way”: Robert Novak, “The CIA vs. Bush,” Washington Post, September 27, 2004.

  “I know, I know”: Julian Borger, “Washington’s Hawk Trains Sights on Iraq,” Guardian, September 25, 2001. Joel Roberts, “Plans for Attack on Iraq Began on 9/11,” CBS News, September 4, 2002. Eric Lichtblau, “President Asked Aide to Explore Iraq Link to 9/11,” New York Times, March 29, 2004.