500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars

by Kurt Eichenwald

The interests of the Americans and the Northern Alliance had diverged. Having marched unimpeded into Kabul, the Afghanis now focused on consolidating their power in the capital city; crushing the surviving al-Qaeda forces and the Taliban army remained a distant second on their priorities list. They had no interest in pursuing the terrorists as they fled farther into eastern Afghanistan.

  With the strong fighting forces unavailable, the Americans turned to the ragtag ones. The job of cobbling together Afghani militias for the continuing battles fell to Gary Berntsen, commander of the CIA’s Jawbreaker forces in the eastern region. With commanders in eastern Afghanistan mostly aligned with the Taliban, Berntsen was able to win over only four groups of fighters, totaling about 2,500 troops. The two largest were led by bitter enemies, Commanders Hazrat Ali and Mohammed Zaman Ghun Shareef, whose factions would soon be shooting at each other rather than at Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.

  But these bands were willing to join with the Americans—for Berntsen, a distasteful choice but the only one available. The combined militias were dubbed the Eastern Alliance and immediately joined the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan.

  • • •

  The torture of Ahmad El-Maati continued, without interrogation, for two days. Finally, bloodied and raw, El-Maati again pleaded with his tormentors to let him talk and at last they said yes.

  “Tell me what you know about some of these Arabs living in Canada,” Salloum said.

  He listed names. Some of them El-Maati recognized. Others he didn’t.

  “Tell me about Abdullah Almalki.”

  “I know him in passing,” El-Maati replied. Their contact was minimal—he knew nothing about Almalki’s business of repacking radios for a Pakistani company. He also didn’t know how the Syrians got his name.

  “What about Maher Arar?”

  The man who had eaten at Mango’s with Almalki, who raised suspicions because investigators believed he had walked in the rain.

  “I know him,” El-Maati said. “But only in passing.”

  The questioning stopped, and one of the Syrians pulled a bag over El-Maati’s head. They began to beat him again, without asking any questions. The new round of torture lasted for a week, maybe more. He lost track of time.

  • • •

  For the Northern Alliance, the best intelligence about Kabul came from the city’s residents. They pointed out Taliban and al-Qaeda members who were trying desperately to hide among the crowds. They led soldiers to Taliban safe houses, weapons caches, and supply sites. They turned over locals who had chosen to help the Taliban, unless the townspeople decided to kill the collaborators themselves.

  Northern Alliance troops showed up at one of the buildings that citizens had identified as an al-Qaeda safe house, kicked in the door, and swept through the building. No one was there, but the place was littered with intelligence materials, including computers, documents, manuals, and other records.

  One soldier looked on the floor and found some papers issued in Canada—a patient card for Toronto General Hospital and a letter from a government agency in Ottawa. Both were for the same man, Amer El-Maati, the brother of Ahmad El-Maati. In a matter of days, the United States informed the Syrians about the newly found link between al-Qaeda and the brother of their recently arrived prisoner.

  • • •

  Lower Manhattan was on the verge of ruin.

  For weeks, as work and rescue crews dug through the rubble at Ground Zero, pressure had been building on the retaining walls that held back the Hudson River. Now surrounding debris had caused the barriers to become unstable. Water flowed through a growing number of cracks and the engineers feared the structure could soon collapse.

  The ensuing deluge would expose the already battered city to a new tragedy of almost incomprehensible proportions. The Hudson would flood lower Manhattan. Water would pour into the subways; anyone riding on them in those neighborhoods would surely drown. The workers at Ground Zero would be buffeted by the torrent, and some would die. While it was impossible to tell how far the river would flow into the city, there was no question that a good portion of Manhattan would be underwater.

  Representatives from a handful of structural engineering and construction firms traveled to the White House to brief officials on the situation and to ask for help. These contractors—including AMEC, Bovis Lend Lease, Tulley, Turner/Plaza, LZA Thornton Tomasetti, and others—had been unsung heroes of 9/11, bringing equipment, workers, and other resources to Ground Zero almost immediately after the towers collapsed. They arrived on-site without contracts or guarantee of payment and they had taken on the dangerous engineering jobs with no protection from liability if another tragedy struck.

  The contractors brought the sobering message to the White House domestic policy office in the West Wing. One construction manager gave a presentation about the growing instability of the walls.

  “We’re shoring them up as best we can,” the executive said. “But it’s obviously a very chaotic, messy situation.”

  One official asked: What would be the impact if the walls collapsed? While the potential death toll could not even be estimated, other outcomes were predictable. The flooding of the subways would shut down New York’s transportation system. The New York Stock Exchange, the investment banks, and the brokerage firms—hell, all of Wall Street—would shutter. The global economic impact could well be epic.

  Fighting the catastrophe once it began would be a significant challenge, the executives warned, since there might not be any contractors to handle the work. The engineering and construction firms already on-site would lose their equipment, their people—everything. Even if the businesses survived the devastation, they would be financially wrecked; their insurance policies wouldn’t come close to covering the damages, if they paid off at all.

  “We really need to get some help getting a contractual indemnity in place,” the executives said. “Ours are very big companies, and their survival is at risk. If there’s a flood, we will all go bankrupt.”

  The White House officials pledged to research ways that they could lawfully protect the companies in the event that the walls collapsed. But they could make no promises about whether the government would be able to help.

  Before the meeting ended, everyone in the room struck a pact—word of the potential disaster would not be disclosed, not even to workers at Ground Zero. New York was still shell-shocked from 9/11 and the anthrax attacks; this news about a chance—just a chance—of calamity would cause a new panic and probably shut the city for months.

  Instead, the engineering firms would monitor the retaining walls closely. If they found that disaster was inevitable, the government would launch a rescue operation to save the residents and workers in downtown Manhattan.

  • • •

  Slowly, over a matter of days, the Syrians told El-Maati what they wanted him to say. Admit to attending a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, admit that Arar and Almalki were there, too. It was a script, El-Maati knew, but one that might lessen the daily infliction of agonizing pain. His resistance crumbled. Yes, he said, it was true. He had received military training from al-Qaeda in 1993. Almalki and Arar had joined him at the same camp.

  Next, his brother. The guards demanded that he confess to having attended flight school at his brother’s instruction so that he could prepare for a suicide mission similar to the 9/11 attacks. El-Maati acknowledged that he took a few flying lessons, but quit long ago; the “plot” made no sense, he told his captors. The Syrians accepted El-Maati’s logic and revised the script. It wasn’t a plane, it was a truck bomb. Their suggested target: the American embassy in Ottawa. That, one interrogator said, was why El-Maati had been carrying the map of federal facilities—except the embassy was not on it.

  Suddenly El-Maati understood. The Syrians were torturing him so that he would invent a story that they could dangle in front of the Americans. They wanted to show that they had caught a big fish and were working to protect the United States. The Syrians and the CI
A had already begun swapping intelligence about al-Qaeda. This new information might solidify their budding relationship.

  El-Maati’s mind raced. He didn’t want to confess to planning an attack on the American embassy—then he might be sent to prison in the United States instead of Canada. He had to change the story.

  “No, no!” he shrieked. “It’s not the U.S. embassy! It’s the Canadian Parliament!”

  As he confessed to the horrific, yet imaginary, crime, El-Maati saw a broad smile split Salloum’s face, an image that would haunt him for years to come.

  • • •

  In Karachi, a scientist named Yazid Sufaat was speaking to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed about lethal bacteria.

  Sufaat was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian Islamic terrorist group affiliated with bin Laden. But in recent months, he had assumed a more important role as al-Qaeda’s top bioweapons expert, charged with growing deadly anthrax spores that could be used to kill thousands.

  Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, had been told about the anthrax program months before by Mohammed Atef, al-Qaeda’s military chief. He had assumed that the special laboratory in Kandahar was being used to develop the microorganisms—suspicions largely confirmed over the summer when he had helped move multiple crates containing biological lab equipment from Karachi to the secret site.

  But Sufaat would no longer be conducting anthrax research in Afghanistan. With al-Qaeda fleeing the country, he had decided to move his lab to Pakistan, and was spending six days there at Sheikh Mohammed’s house as he prepared to resume his work.

  During a lengthy conversation, Sufaat told Sheikh Mohammed for the first time about details of his role as the head of the anthrax program.

  “I’m very happy with my work,” Sufaat said.

  He particularly enjoyed mentoring younger al-Qaeda members who were helping with the program. He had been giving biology lessons to two young terrorist operatives, Sufaat said, and they had proved to be very able assistants.

  “Do you worry about the danger of your research?” Sheikh Mohammed asked.

  “No,” Sufaat replied. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  He and his assistants had all received anthrax inoculations, Sufaat said, and there was no reason to doubt their effectiveness.

  Through myriad go-betweens that disguised the real customer, Sufaat had obtained the drugs from the Bioport Corporation, the same company that supplied the vaccines for American soldiers. To ensure effectiveness, Bioport had turned to an integrated product team, a group of top experts in the field—including Bruce Ivins, the psychologically troubled anthrax researcher.

  • • •

  A silver Toyota hatchback tore down Highway 4 past Takteh Pol, just south of Kandahar. The village wasn’t much of a village at all, just adobe huts sprinkled around a few dilapidated structures that might once have been buildings.

  It was November 24. The fighting in Kandahar was reaching a fever pitch, with the Northern Alliance about to overrun the city. The car’s driver, Salim Hamdan, was fleeing the raging combat, trying to make his way to Pakistan, where his wife and daughter were waiting.

  Taliban 107-millimeter artillery rockets struck the ground nearby, sending up clouds of dirt with each explosion. A roadblock loomed ahead amid the chaos, and Hamdan slowed down. As he rolled to a halt, he saw Pashtun troops stopping cars and searching passengers.

  The fighters blocked a van directly ahead of Hamdan. Two men emerged from the vehicle and were swarmed by angry troops. As that drama unfolded, another soldier opened Hamdan’s door and ordered him out. The soldier barked at him to stay still and fired a gun at his feet. Hamdan was terrified; he knew there were two AK-47s inside a bag in the car.

  Suddenly, up by the van, a scuffle. The driver had grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin. The soldiers jumped him, scrambling to snatch the explosive, but there was no need—it failed to detonate. Angered by the attempt, the Pashtun combatants leveled their guns at the two men and fired. Even when both had collapsed in bloody heaps, the troops continued to pump bullets into their lifeless bodies.

  Hamdan saw only the shooting; he knew nothing of the grenade. He believed that the Pashtun could be frighteningly brutal—he had heard stories about some of their fighters playing soccer with the head of a Russian soldier during the war against the Soviets. They had just searched his car, and now they would be coming for him. He couldn’t stay. He didn’t want to die.

  Hamdan ran up a ridge alongside the road and slid into a gully, illogically hoping that the Pashtun soldiers would be unable to find him. Within seconds, the fighters yanked him out and dragged him back to the road. They hit him, knocked him to his knees. They were going to kill him, one soldier snarled as he pointed a gun at Hamdan’s head.

  • • •

  Major Henry Smith of the army heard the commotion.

  He and his soldiers were fighting alongside the Northern Alliance in the battle for Kandahar and had just survived a Taliban ambush the previous night at Takteh Pol. Now, as his team was preparing for the next leg of the attack, the shouting and gunfire erupted. Some Afghanis ran to Smith, stuttering that something important had happened. He walked to the checkpoint, where angry Pashtun were milling around. He glanced to the right and saw fighters pulling a man who was struggling to get away.

  A Pashtun soldier approached, motioning to the back of the Toyota. “Take a look at this,” he said.

  The hatchback was open. Inside, Smith saw two SA-7 antiaircraft rockets. He realized that this was the car of the man he had just seen being dragged off. He walked over and heard the Afghans saying they were about to kill him. Smith stepped in.

  “No, no, no,” he said, his hands raised.

  He called out to some of his guys. “Take positive control of this man,” he said, pointing at Hamdan.

  The American soldiers took Hamdan away and secured him under guard to ensure that the Afghanis had no opportunity to murder him. He was taken to an empty building where he was restrained with a hood over his head. A medic examined him, and the soldiers gave him food and water.

  Hamdan understood that Smith had saved his life. And soon, the major would learn that his quick actions had led to the capture of a critical source of intelligence—Salim Hamdan was Osama bin Laden’s personal driver.

  • • •

  That same day, hundreds of Taliban fighters gathered on a dusty desert road near Mazar-e Sharif. It was a hazy, cold Saturday, and the soldiers had just fled Kunduz, the latest target of the American air assault. They had come to meet the Northern Alliance. And surrender.

  General Dostum, who had led the Northern Alliance in capturing Mazar-e Sharif weeks before, handled the negotiations. He offered the Taliban representatives a deal: If the native Afghanis laid down their weapons, they could go home. But the foreigners fighting alongside them would have to be turned over to Dostum. The Afghanis agreed and returned to their men.

  “Surrender your gun in the name of the Koran,” a Taliban leader called out, explaining nothing about the terms of the agreement with Dostum.

  The weapons were taken from the fighters by Dostum’s men and laid on the ground. As promised, the Afghanis were released; the foreigners were told to climb into the back of flatbed trucks. Uncertain if they were to be killed or imprisoned, the men hid guns and grenades in their clothing. The Northern Alliance failed to search them.

  “Take them to Qala-i-Jangi,” Dostum called out.

  His forces knew the location well—it was a sprawling, nineteenth-century fortress that served as their commander’s headquarters. Hundred-foot pale yellow walls surrounded the two compounds inside, sealing them off from entry or escape.

  As the sun set, the convoy reached the main gate on the east side of the stronghold. The trucks pulled to a stop, and Northern Alliance soldiers unloaded the enemy fighters.

  A prisoner hid a grenade in his hand as Nadir Ali, one of Dostum’s senior commanders, approached. When Ali was a few feet away, the Tal
iban fighter pulled the pin and waited. Seconds later, the abrupt explosion pierced the sounds in the courtyard, tearing both men apart. Later that night, another grenade, another Northern Alliance leader killed. Soldiers herded the surviving prisoners to cells in the basement of a pink building. But even with the two attacks, there was no reinforcement of the guards.

  • • •

  The plot was hatched that night in the basement cells at Qala-i-Jangi. If the foreign Taliban members were released the next morning, they would leave without incident. If not, they would revolt—the Northern Alliance still hadn’t searched their prisoners well, and a few had been able to sneak their weapons into the cells. When the time came, the armed detainees would lead the fight.

  The planning continued for hours among a small group of the Taliban fighters. Others listened but stayed quiet. They might not join the uprising, but they certainly knew it was coming.

  • • •

  The next morning, two members of the CIA’s paramilitary Special Activities Division walked through an open-air courtyard at Qala-i-Jangi, searching for al-Qaeda members among the detainees. About 150 prisoners were lined up in rows, on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs.

  The grenade attacks from the night before had unnerved the Northern Alliance fighters. Rather than questioning the prisoners, one guard suggested that they should shoot them, one by one, until somebody identified the al-Qaeda members. The Americans said no. They would use interrogation.

  One agent, Johnny Michael Spann, approached a thin, bearded man dressed in a sweater that was usually issued to British soldiers. This prisoner was of particular interest—someone had told Spann that he spoke English.

  “Hey you,” Spann said. “Right here with your head down. Look at me. I know you speak English. Look at me. Where did you get the British military sweater?”

  The prisoner did not look up and did not speak, so Spann walked away. Soon after, Northern Alliance soldiers moved the man to a blanket, pushing him down. Spann returned and squatted down.

  “Where are you from?” Spann asked. “You believe in what you’re doing here that much, you’re willing to be killed here? How were you recruited to come here? Who brought you here?”