Reign of Terror

by Spencer Ackerman

  Rumsfeld agreed to table Iraq: Patrick E. Tyler and Elaine Sciolino, “Bush’s Advisers Split on Scope of Retaliation,” New York Times, September 20, 2001.

  Three months later, national security adviser: Robert Draper, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2020), 49. Spencer Ackerman and Franklin Foer, “The Radical,” The New Republic, December 1, 2003.

  Countdown: Iraq and a few months later canceled Phil Donahue’s program: Lisa de Moraes, “MSNBC Again Tinkering With Its Lineup,” Washington Post, October 26, 2002. Bill Carter, “MSNBC Cancels the Phil Donahue Talk Show,” New York Times, February 26, 2003.

  Carlson’s guest that day: James Carville and Tucker Carlson, “Should the U.S. Attack Iraq?” Crossfire, CNN, June 17, 2002.

  “You can’t distinguish”: George W. Bush, remarks in a photo opportunity with Colombian President Uribe, Washington, D.C., September 25, 2002, available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060915-4.html.

  By September 2003: Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, “Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds,” Washington Post, September 6, 2003.

  Her successor, Mike Morell: Spencer Ackerman, “The CIA’s Failures,” The Nation, June 26, 2008. 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), 86–87.

  “The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency”: Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Hardly Intelligent: How the CIA Unintentionally Aids Terrorism,” Weekly Standard, June 10, 2002.

  Laurie Mylroie, a conspiracist: Laurie Mylroie, Washington Journal, C-SPAN, December 24, 2003.

  Asked after 9/11: Patrick E. Tyler and Elaine Sciolino, “Bush’s Advisers Split on Scope of Retaliation,” New York Times, September 20, 2001.

  Established in August 2002: See comments of Abram Shulsky, director, Office of Special Plans: www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Homeland_Defense/04-F-1702.pdf.

  As Wurmser explained: Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 215–33.

  By September Rumsfeld spoke: Eric Schmitt, “Rumsfeld Says U.S. Has ‘Bulletproof’ Evidence of Iraq’s Links to al-Qaeda,” New York Times, September 28, 2002.

  “[I]ntelligence was misused publicly”: Paul R. Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006. And Pillar’s interview with Terry Gross, “CIA Terror Expert Charges Politicized Intelligence,” Fresh Air, NPR, February 16, 2006,https://freshairarchive.org/segments/cia-terror-expert-charges-politicized-intelligence.

  That was also the impression: Douglas Jehl, “British Memo on Iraq War Decision Rouses Bush Critics in U.S.,” International Herald-Tribune, May 21, 2005. Michael Smith initially published the Dearlove memo in the Times of London, May 1, 2005.

  Curveball later admitted: Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, “Defector Admits to WMD Lies that Triggered Iraq War,” Guardian, February 15, 2011. Mark Mazzetti, “Pre-War Intelligence Ignored, Former CIA Official Says,” New York Times, April 22, 2006. Spencer Ackerman and John Judis, “The Operator,” The New Republic, September 21, 2003.

  And the Iraq WMD: Ackerman, “The CIA’s Failures.”

  Rove had urged Republicans: Joe Conason, “Rove Waves Flag for GOP Candidates,” New York Observer, January 28, 2002.

  “Some people seem to think”: Mary Orndorff, “Bush Builds Iraq Case; Promises to Get Congress’ Approval to Strike at Saddam,” Birmingham News, September 5, 2002.

  Stern asked if Trump: Donald Trump on The Howard Stern Show, September 11, 2002, soundcloud.com/buzzfeedandrew/trump-on-the-howard-stern-show-on-sept-11-2002#t=0:00, accessed August 9, 2020.

  The Iraqi émigrés: Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam.”

  Wolfowitz spoke in the Arab American: “Paul Wolfowitz Speaks in Dearborn,” CNN, March 11, 2003. Michael Dobbs, “For Wolfowitz, a Vision May Be Realized,” Washington Post, April 7, 2003.

  “Are millions of men”: George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracies,” November 6, 2003. Transcript available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html.

  “As I’ve watched these men and women”: Sean Coughlin, “House Cafeterias Change Names for ‘French’ Fries and ‘French’ Toast,” CNN, March 12, 2003.

  Those who practiced: David Frum, “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” National Review, March 25, 2003.

  That was the work of CIA torture: It failed. The U.S. rendered Libi to Egypt, where he was tortured further. Senate Intelligence Committee, “Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare to Prewar Assessments,” September 8, 2006, 76–82.

  The month of Powell’s speech: Eric Schmitt, “Army Chief Raises Estimate of G.I.’s Needed in Postwar Iraq,” New York Times, February 25, 2003. Schmitt, “Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size,” New York Times, February 28, 2003.

  “What choice did I have?”: “Colin Powell Rejects Iraq War Intelligence,” Al Jazeera, September 11, 2011. Robert Draper, “Colin Powell Still Wants Answers,” New York Times Magazine, July 16, 2020. Draper, To Start a War, 396–97. Jason M. Breslow, “Colin Powell: U.N. Speech ‘Was a Great Intelligence Failure,’ ” Frontline, PBS, May 17, 2016.

  “If they killed him”: Jason M. Breslow, “Nada Bakos: How Zarqawi Went from Thug to ISIS Founder,” Frontline, PBS, May 17, 2006.

  Surveying the intellectual landscape: David Brooks, “The Collapse of the Dream Palaces,” Weekly Standard, April 28, 2003.

  Baghdad neighborhood Yarmouk: Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2005), 197–210.

  “What kind of people loot dirt?”: Daniel Williams and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “U.S. Troops Frustrated with Role in Iraq; Soldiers Say They Are Ill-Equipped for Peacekeeping,” Washington Post, June 20, 2003.

  They permitted the looting: Sean Loughlin, “Rumsfeld on Looting in Iraq: ‘Stuff Happens,’ ” CNN, April 12, 2003.

  One of them, KBR: Ed Harriman, “Where Has All the Money Gone?” London Review of Books, July 7, 2005.

  It hired individuals: Ariana Eunjung Cha, “In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime,” Washington Post, May 23, 2004.

  An experienced diplomat: Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006), 204.

  Iraq could indeed: Estimates of the exact size of the Green Zone mysteriously vary. This one comes from Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013), 100. It corresponds with my recollections of the Green Zone from 2007.

  Described in 2004 as home: William Langewiesche, “Welcome to the Green Zone,” The Atlantic, November 2004.

  a playpen for Americans: Ricks, Fiasco, 206–9.

  CPA buildings, protected: See Rajiv Chandrasekaran, interview with Frontline, PBS, August 9, 2006.

  In the Red Zone, Iraqis looking: Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour, Paula Zahn, Jane Arraf, John Zarrella, David Mattingly, Alex Quade, Rusty Dornin, and Judy Woodruff, “Iraq Votes,” CNN, January 27, 2005.

  The war allowed a retired: Spencer Ackerman, “Ain’t No Party Like a Blackwater Party, ’Cause a Blackwater Party Got Coke, ’Roids and AKs,” Wired, September 23, 2010.

  Before sunrise Blackwater staff: Spencer Ackerman, “$265 Bomb, $300 Billion War: The Economics of the 9/11 Era’s Signature Weapon,” Wired, September 8, 2011.

  “You Americans can put a man”: Eric Schmitt, “For G.I.’s, Pride in War Efforts but Doubts About Iraq’s Future,” New York Times, January 4, 2004. Petraeus was a rare officer who recognized that the U.S. lived in Iraq on borrowed time but sought to borrow more.

  He issued cards: Dexter Filkin
s, “Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraqi Towns,” New York Times, December 7, 2003.

  Sassaman later covered up: Ricks, Fiasco, 232–40. Dexter Filkins, “The Fall of the Warrior King,” New York Times Magazine, October 23, 2005.

  Major General Ray Odierno: Unbylined, “U.S. Officer Fined for Harsh Interrogation Tactics,” CNN, December 13, 2003. Deborah Sontag, “How Colonel Risked His Career by Menacing Detainee and Lost,” New York Times, May 27, 2004.

  “if we had had weapons”: “Violent Response: The U.S. Army in Falluja,” Human Rights Watch, June 16, 2003. Ian Fisher, “U.S. Troops Fire on Iraqi Protesters, Leaving 15 Dead,” New York Times, April 29, 2003.

  “Our combat against the Americans”: Letter of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, translated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, February 2004, 2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm, accessed May 16, 2019.

  Footage of the carnage: Unbylined, “Bodies Mutilated in Iraq Attack,” BBC, March 31, 2004. Colin Freeman, “Bodies Dragged through Street, Hung from Bridge,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 2004.

  According to a memo that two British Labour Party members: David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor, “MPs Leaked Bush Plan to Hit al-Jazeera,” Guardian, January 9, 2006. 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.

  While Fallujah passed: Ricks, Fiasco, 330–46. Paul Wood, “Iraq’s Hardest Fight: The U.S. Battle for Fallujah 2004,” BBC, November 10, 2014. Orly Halpern, “Hate for U.S. Unites Rival Muslims,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 9, 2004. Deborah Horan, “Fallujah Lull Lets Women, Children Flee,” Chicago Tribune, April 10, 2004. Dan Lamothe, “Remembering the Iraq War’s Bloodiest Battle, 10 Years Later,” Washington Post, November 4, 2014.

  massive open-air incinerators: Katie Drummond, “Combat ‘Burn Pits’ Ruin Immune Systems, Study Shows,” WIRED, May 23, 2012.

  “You go to war with the army you have”: Eric Schmitt, “Iraq-Bound Troops Confront Rumsfeld Over Lack of Armor,” New York Times, December 8, 2004.

  Iraq convinced McChrystal: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 90–91. Author’s interview with Stanley McChrystal, May 5, 2020.

  The regimen, modified and implemented: Senate Armed Services Committee report on detentions, April 22, 2009, 205.

  The prison where this would unfold: Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski interview, Frontline, PBS, August 5, 2005, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/interviews/karpinski.html#3, accessed April 23, 2019.

  Abu Ghraib soon became: Report of Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones and Maj. Gen. George Fay, “Investigation of Intelligence Activities at Abu Ghraib,” 4, available at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429125.pdf.

  Graner photographed his assaults: Ibid., 71–95.

  the responsibility wasn’t theirs: Julian Borger, “Pentagon Blamed over Jail ‘Sadism,’ ” Guardian, August 24, 2004.

  In these cases: Jones and Fay, “Investigation of Intelligence Activities at Abu Ghraib,” 3.

  If Rumsfeld resigned: Eric Schmitt, “Abuse Panel Says Rules on Inmates Need Overhaul,” New York Times, August 25, 2004.

  “promoting policies to abuse prisoners”: Sarah Wildman, “Closed Sessions,” The New Republic, December 30, 2002. Kwame Holman, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, October 6, 2005.

  “The only way this effort”: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Peter Pace, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, press briefing, June 17, 2004.

  The Democratic senator who on 9/12: Text of Zell Miller’s Republican National Convention speech, CBS News, September 1, 2004, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/text-of-zell-millers-rnc-speech.

  “Iraq will either be”: Remarks of George W. Bush in a news conference, April 14, 2004. Available through The New York Times, “Transcript of Bush’s Remarks on Iraq: ‘We Will Finish the Work of the Fallen,’ ” April 14, 2004.

  Six months later: Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Civilian Death Toll in Iraq Nears 100,000,” New Scientist, October 29, 2004. Fred Barnes, “The Bumpy Road to Democracy in Iraq,” Weekly Standard, April 11, 2004.

  A military source: Michael Hirsch and John Barry, “The Salvador Option,” Newsweek, January 8, 2005.

  “shut the fuck up and obey”: Cited in Michael Brice-Saddler and Eli Rosenberg, “Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Uses Racist, Homophobic Language in Second Set of Recordings,” Washington Post, March 11, 2019.

  Neocon defense theorist: Danielle Pletka, “There’s No Freedom Gene,” New York Times, March 18, 2008.

  Evangelicals were reaching: Abdul Wahed Wafa, “Preachers in Kabul Urge Execution of Convert to Christianity,” New York Times, March 25, 2006. Doug Bandow, “Christians in the Crosshairs,” The American Conservative, October 23, 2006.

  One of the confirmed desecrations: Josh White and Dan Eggen, “U.S. Admits Koran Abuse at Cuba Base,” reprinted in The Guardian, June 4, 2005. Lloyd Vries, “U.S. Confirms Some Quran Abuse,” CBS News, May 27, 2005.

  Barnes, speaking on Fox News: Fred Barnes, Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News, June 9, 2005.

  The next time the captain: Scott Johnson, “A Fateful Letter to the Editor of the New York Times,” Powerline Blog, October 23, 2012.

  “sometimes to the point of discomfort”: “Final Report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 4. Available at https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmdcomm.html.

  Goss brought in a coterie: Spencer Ackerman, “Shooting the Messenger,” Salon, November 16, 2004.

  Goss’s GOP replacement: Spencer Ackerman, “Mole People,” The New Republic, July 31, 2006.

  It was his key: Quadrennial Defense Review, Office of the Secretary of Defense, February 6, 2006. Available at https://archive.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/QDR20060203.pdf.

  Bush’s speech was simultaneously: George W. Bush, “President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy,” October 6, 2005. Transcript available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-3.html.

  Bush’s former security: Comments of Richard Falkenrath, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, October 7, 2005.

  “If we don’t take the enemy”: Comments of Dan Bartlett, Scarborough Country, NBC, November 11, 2005.

  The Republican chairman: Comments of Ed Royce, House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, October 27, 2005, available at http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa24203.000/hfa24203_0f.htm.

  Bay Buchanan, Pat’s sister: Comments of Bay Buchanan, CNN, October 7, 2005.

  On Fox, Barnes similarly exulted: Comments of Fred Barnes, Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News, October 6, 2005.

  Bush and his aides: Comments of Tucker Carlson, The Situation with Tucker Carlson, MSNBC, November 25, 2005.

  Stanley McChrystal, by this time: Author’s interview with Stanley McChrystal, May 5, 2020.

  The president praised: George W. Bush speech on immigration, May 15, 2006, transcription by The New York Times.

  “calling out the National Guard”: “U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions Reacts to Bush Immigration Address,” press release, May 15, 2006. Available at www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12a%20Appendix.pdf.

  Chapter Three: Liberal Complicity in the War on Terror

  “Governor Ridge obviously”: John Gibson, “Inside Afghanistan,” Fox News, October 11, 2001.

  Lieberman’s proposed new cabinet: Ari Fleischer, White House press briefing, March 19, 2002. Available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020619-13.html.

  “bold organizational change”: Senate Government Affairs Committee hearing, “Legislation to Establish a Department of National Homeland Security and a White House Office to Combat Terrorism,” April 11, 2002, www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107shrg79889/html/CHRG-
107shrg79889.htm.

  Tom Daschle, the Senate: Nick Andersen, “Bush Gets a Democratic Push on U.S. Homeland Security Bill,” Houston Chronicle, June 14, 2002.

  House Democrats rejected: “H.R. 5005 (107th): Homeland Security Act of 2002,” United States House of Representatives, July 26, 2002. “On Passage of the Bill (H.R. 5005, as amended),” United States Senate, November 19, 2002.

  Senator Russ Feingold, who: Unbylined, “Senate Approves Homeland Bill,” CNN, November 20, 2002.

  unavoidably politically advantageous: Spencer Ackerman, “Home Office,” The New Republic, August 19–26, 2002.

  “The real importance of this bill”: Senate Government Affairs Committee hearing, “Creation of Department of Homeland Security,” April 11, 2002.

  California senator Dianne Feinstein said: Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Protecting the Homeland: The President’s Proposal for Reorganizing Our Homeland Security Infrastructure,” June 25, 2002. The bill reassigned dispensation and care for children and teenagers who cross the border alone to the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. But as was inevitable, DHS takes initial custody of those minors.

  “exercise in disruption”: Nomination hearing for Michael J. Garcia for Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Senate Judiciary Committee, 108th Congress, July 8, 2003.

  Under cover of homeland security: U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Workplace Protection, Committee on Education and Labor, 110th Congress, Second Session, “ICE Workplace Raids: Their Impact on U.S. Children, Families and Their Communities,” May 20, 2008, available at www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg42334/html/CHRG-110hhrg42334.htm. Maria Politzer, “Most Immigrants Arrested in ‘Operation Return to Sender’ Had No Criminal Record,” Phoenix New Times, November 5, 2009. Jesse McKinley, “San Francisco Bay Area Reacts Angrily to Series of Immigration Raids,” New York Times, April 28, 2007.