500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars

by Kurt Eichenwald

  The SISMI officer, Stefano D’Ambrosio, could only listen in disbelief as Lady described the madness of the undertaking. Snatching the suspected terrorist, Abu Omar, from an allied Western country—one that was more than willing to share intelligence about the man—was irrational. Italy wasn’t Pakistan; there was no reason to take such an extraordinary step.

  Worse, Lady said, he now knew that Italy’s premier law enforcement and state security service—DIGOS—was conducting surveillance of Abu Omar. The group had tapped his phones, which had already led to other suspects. Investigating the Egyptian cleric was invaluable in obtaining new intelligence about Italy’s Islamic extremists. Leaving him alone while law enforcement watched was certainly a better choice than making him disappear.

  “I’m telling you this because I wanted to see if you were already aware of the plan to collect him,” Lady said.

  The operation, Lady said, had been worked out by Jeff Castelli, head of the CIA in Rome. “And he’s following a range of precise directives from agency headquarters in Langley,” he said.

  A CIA squad belonging to a unit called the Special Operations Group was already in Milan, preparing for the abduction. “These guys are the heavies, the ones who conduct special intelligence operations,” Lady said. “All of them have military and operational experience. They’re not just confined to investigative work.”

  There were several steps to the plan, Lady said. Once Abu Omar was grabbed in Milan, he would be driven to an air base near Ghedi, in the province of Brescia. Then he would be moved onto a plane from Ramstein Air Base in Germany and flown to another location. Lady did not mention that Abu Omar was being taken to Egypt.

  “SISMI personnel are at work near Ghedi right now to find a suitable place to hold him until we can get him on the plane,” Lady said. The ones involved weren’t renegades; all of this was being done with the knowledge and approval of the director of SISMI, General Nicolò Pollari.

  After finishing his description of the plan, Lady shook his head. “None of this makes sense,” he said again. “This man is being subjected to an excellent and thorough investigation by DIGOS. Why in the world is it necessary to damage our fruitful collaboration with them?”

  Plus, no one at the CIA was recognizing obvious problems. He had been forced to betray the confidence of DIGOS by keeping it in the dark about the scheme, Lady said, and that could well put everyone in danger.

  “This man and all the other suspects are being tailed,” Lady said. “But no one is considering how DIGOS is going to react when they see someone abducted off the street in front of them. There might even be shooting.”

  Feeling bowled over, D’Ambrosio sat back in his chair. “I agree with your criticisms,” he said. “But what you might not know is that the air-base commander at Ghedi, Colonel Bellini, would never have consented to using his base for this. When he finds out, he will be furious.”

  Lady spread his arms out in despair. “What can I do?”

  “Why has such an action been planned?”

  “It’s a project intended to remove a subject from circulation who’s held to be extremely dangerous.”

  “But this is just one man,” D’Ambrosio replied. “Once he’s been taken away, he’ll probably just be replaced by somebody else who we’ll have trouble fingering. And then we won’t be able to place this new fellow under observation. Plus, if DIGOS continued their work, they could develop more evidence sufficient for Abu Omar’s arrest and sentence in a court.”

  “I agree,” Lady said. “But this is a plan that is now decidedly close to the hearts of Castelli, as well as Sabrina de Sousa.”

  D’Ambrosio recognized the name. De Sousa worked at the Rome embassy; Castelli had sent her to Milan, Lady said, to keep tabs on him and push him in the right direction. Lady bad-mouthed de Sousa, and then began to belittle Castelli.

  “What do you expect someone who’s a Buddhist, burns incense in his office, and listens to the music of Bob Marley to know about terrorism?”

  Both men chuckled.

  “Well, despite being the section head for SISMI in Milan, I know nothing of this plan,” D’Ambrosio said.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Lady replied. “None of the activities here involve your staff. It’s SISMI people coming directly from Rome.”

  A moment passed, then Lady’s eyes flashed with a new zest. “I cannot believe that Pollari is in on this!” he snapped.

  • • •

  If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong.

  Mark Fallon, head of the Criminal Investigative Task Force at Guantanamo, was stunned by what he was reading. The words leaped out at him from the minutes of the October 2 debate between the military and the CIA on subjecting al-Qahtani to harsher interrogations. Fallon wasn’t supposed to have seen the document, but one of his colleagues, Blaine Thomas, had snagged a bootleg copy and e-mailed it to him.

  With every sentence he read, his revulsion deepened. Waterboarding, plans to hide abusive techniques from the Red Cross, the need to have medical personnel at the ready during interrogations—it was all abhorrent. Yet the people involved chattered on about this cruelty in such a relaxed, banal way, as if they were discussing plans for a weekend barbecue. Members of Fallon’s team hadn’t been invited to the meeting, and no wonder. A criminal investigator would never have sat through it without raising hell—and might even have deemed the discussion to be an illegal conspiracy.

  On October 28, Fallon forwarded the e-mail to other members of his team and included his own analysis.

  “This looks like the kind of stuff that Congressional hearings are made of,” he typed. The ideas being tossed about “would, in my opinion, shock the conscience of any legal body looking at using the result of the interrogations.”

  But this was not just about how a court or tribunal might judge the military’s interrogation plans. “Someone,” Fallon wrote, “needs to be considering how history will look back at this.”

  • • •

  That day, Paul Clement stood in the well of a Richmond courtroom, preparing to argue the latest government appeal in the Hamdi case. The deputy solicitor general had been readying himself for this moment through moot court sessions at the Justice Department, with colleagues playing the role of the three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The exercise honed his argument that the government was not under any obligation to provide more information about its reasons for detaining Hamdi, as had been demanded by Judge Doumar of the lower court.

  Reporters and onlookers packed the courtroom, including several government officials who had quietly slipped into the gallery. David Addington and Tim Flanigan had arrived about an hour early, but had been careful not to identify themselves to anyone at the courthouse; the last thing they needed was to be swarmed by journalists.

  Both sides trotted out the same arguments they had presented to Doumar. Clement maintained that the declaration of Michael Mobbs, a Pentagon official, that had been filed by the administration in July spelled out everything Doumar needed to know about Hamdi’s detention. The courts should have no further role; this was solely a matter for the president.

  “I think it’s important to give discretion to the executive branch to handle detainees as it sees fit,” Clement said. “It is possible for the United States to handle an individual seized in the United States as an enemy combatant.”

  Not good enough, argued Frank Dunham Jr., Hamdi’s lawyer. The Mobbs declaration was nothing more than a series of government assertions, all with the implied message “Trust us.” The administration was refusing to allow Hamdi to even see the declaration—vague as it was—to say whether any of it was true.

  “Nobody knows what his version of the facts might be,” Dunham said.

  The passage of time had also undermined the government’s claim about the need to question Hamdi, he said. Of course any decision made on the battlefield was entitled to deference, and the government’s interest in gathering intelligenc
e from a captive was understandable. But—given the months that had passed—how much could Hamdi know that he hadn’t already revealed?

  Chief Judge Wilkinson seized on that thread of inquiry. Was Hamdi even worth holding? After all, the Mobbs declaration said that Hamdi had been in Afghanistan only a few months before he was caught.

  “Is Mr. Hamdi still of use to you in your intelligence-gathering operations?” Wilkinson asked. “Is Hamdi still of importance?”

  Absolutely, Clement replied. Anytime another suspected terrorist was captured, Hamdi could be prodded to reveal whatever secrets he might know or insights he might have about the man. Intelligence was a mosaic, where bits and pieces of information came together to form an understanding of reality.

  But wait, Dunham retorted. The very expectation that Hamdi should be held because he might cough up new evidence placed the government under the obligation to explain why it considered him so valuable. “We still don’t know if he’s an enemy combatant, that’s the sixty-four-dollar question,” he said. “The precedent that the administration is setting has a long-term potential for incursions on our liberties.”

  Wilkinson all but threw up his hands at the quandary being thrust upon him and his colleagues. It was the job of the court to strike the right balance between protecting the safety of American citizens and upholding the country’s values. But demanding that the administration bring more evidence to court could well insert judges into the war.

  “I’m worried about wading in over my head with these production orders,” he said. “Doesn’t that move the battlefield right into the courtroom?”

  “Our freedoms don’t come cheap,” Dunham replied. “They can’t be swept away.”

  The arguments continued for two hours. At the end, Wilkinson nodded to the lawyers on both sides. “The American people have been beautifully served by the quality of the advocacy,” he said.

  Then, following a tradition of the Fourth Circuit, Wilkinson led his two colleagues down from the bench to shake hands with the battery of attorneys.

  • • •

  A White House van pulled up to one of Washington’s premier hotels at 8:30 on the morning of October 30. The driver scampered out and opened the doors for two dignitaries, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the men designated to oversee the new searches in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

  The groundwork for inspections had been under way for more than a month. The new U.N. resolution demanding that Iraq disarm would be approved in a few days. Blix had been crisscrossing the world in preparation—negotiating with the Iraqis, meeting with Russian officials, consulting members of the Bush administration. Then, two nights before, Colin Powell had telephoned Blix to say that the time had come for him to speak with the president.

  The van drove Blix and ElBaradei—director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency—and their aides to the portico outside the West Wing of the executive mansion. The aides were left to cool their heels while Blix and ElBaradei were escorted to Cheney’s office.

  The vice president greeted his guests and invited them to take a seat. Cheney had no real questions. Instead, he did most of the talking.

  Blix was somewhat uneasy. He was still troubled by Cheney’s speech in August in which he dismissed weapons inspectors as essentially useless and gave his confident assertion that Iraq undoubtedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. There was a strong chance that Iraqis might be hiding illegal weapons—particularly anthrax, Blix thought. But Cheney seemed to be willfully overlooking evidence—such as the results of earlier inspections—that contradicted his narrative, placing his faith instead in the stories spun by Iraqi defectors about secret weaponry concealed throughout the country. Inspections would have to combat assertions.

  It all came down to the safety of American citizens, Cheney said. “I always take the security interests of the United States as the starting point,” he said. “Nothing else overrides that. And if inspections don’t get results, they’re not going to go on forever.”

  He looked Blix in the eye. “The United States is ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament,” he said.

  Blix got the message. If his team found the weapons that Cheney was certain had been secreted away, they had done a good job. If they didn’t, they were a naive collection of bumblers, and Saddam would have to be defanged by military might.

  Heads I win, tails you lose.

  • • •

  Minutes later in the Oval Office, Bush shifted about in his chair as he spoke with Blix and ElBaradei. He was a sharp contrast to his dour and unflappable vice president, Blix thought—charming, with an air of almost boyish enthusiasm. And his message was almost the antithesis of Cheney’s.

  “The United States genuinely wants peace,” he said. “Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m not some wild, gung ho Texan bent on dragging the U.S. into war.”

  He was willing to stand by while the U.N. Security Council debated a new resolution, but not for long. The League of Nations delayed and debated about disarmament without ever making real progress—a failure that set the stage for World War II. The United States was not about to commit the same colossal blunder.

  “But America has full confidence in you and Mr. ElBaradei,” Bush said. “We are going to throw our full support behind you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Blix replied. “We appreciate that. I consider the support of the United States to be essential for our success.”

  The two diplomats headed off for meetings with the president’s national security team. The conversation with Bush had been devoid of any real substance—probably on purpose, Blix surmised. He had just been subjected to a good-cop, bad-cop routine, with Bush’s cheery tone meant to convey American hopes for his success and Cheney’s forbidding demeanor intended to afford him a glimpse of the consequences of failure.

  • • •

  That same day, Stefano D’Ambrosio, the head of the Milan office for SISMI, was walking down a street in Bologna alongside Marco Mancini, the second in command for Italy’s military intelligence agency.

  A few days had passed since D’Ambrosio had heard from Bob Lady—the CIA station chief in Milan—about the American plan to abduct one of the city’s residents, Abu Omar. Despite Lady’s insistence that the director of SISMI was part of the operation, D’Ambrosio felt obligated to warn his bosses of the CIA officer’s qualms about the scheme and to express his own dismay as well.

  Mancini listened in silence, his face stony, as D’Ambrosio spelled out his and Lady’s concerns.

  “I seriously urge you to advise the director of these issues,” D’Ambrosio said. “But please don’t let him know that I was made directly aware of this plan by Bob Lady.” Lady, he said, might suffer serious consequences for having filled in D’Ambrosio without permission.

  “Also, I want to be clear,” D’Ambrosio added. “It is not possible for SISMI and CIA operatives to come into my territory without my knowing about it.”

  Mancini turned to D’Ambrosio, glaring at him. “But was it really Lady himself who told you?” he asked.

  “Yes, it was.”

  A grunt. “I find that very disturbing.”

  “Well,” D’Ambrosio replied, “might it be opportune to make a written note of this?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Mancini replied. He would personally alert Gustavo Pignero, SISMI’s director of counterespionage.

  The meeting ended. And while D’Ambrosio didn’t know it yet, he had just critically damaged his career.

  • • •

  Bruce Ivins was sitting at a table, scrawling messages to himself. The anthrax researcher was increasingly troubled. He had made mistakes. His decision to decontaminate his work area against his boss’s instructions had led the FBI to question him; he confessed not only to testing and cleaning there in April 2002, but also a few months before, in December.

  At this point the FBI still considered him a valued member of the investigative team and di
smissed his actions as just the behavior of a quirky guy. But having to explain himself to the bureau unnerved Ivins. He was embarrassed and anxious. He tried to appear blasé about it—he laughed to colleagues that maybe the government thought he might be the killer, as if such an accusation was the most absurd idea conceivable.

  But when he was alone, symptoms of his stress bubbled over. He had long been fond of composing bizarre poems, and now he dashed them off more frequently, with stranger twists than ever. He wrote about a colleague’s circumcision, another’s obesity, manically jumping from topic to topic. Recently, he had gone a step further, scrawling notes to himself that vaguely threatened his perceived enemies.

  His hand swooped maniacally as he wrote his latest tirade on a steno pad in wild block letters interspersed with flowing cursive strokes. The words were laced with rage at unspecified adversaries.

  I DON’T CONGRATULATE OPPONENTS, I HUMILIATE THEM

  I DRAW FIRST BLOOD . . . AND LAST

  I’M NOT YOUR OPPONENT—I’M YOUR ENEMY.

  Ivins finished his scribbling. He ripped the page off the pad and stuffed it into a drawer.

  • • •

  A forensic investigator with the Indonesian police slowly scanned the light beam from a Mini-CrimeScope 400 down the mangled remnant of a car chassis. The five-foot length of metal discovered at the Bali bombing site had been examined repeatedly for clues, without success. Now, with the case underway for weeks, investigators were falling into near desperation. The trail was going cold, and they still didn’t have a single suspect.

  The investigation had seen successes in the early days. The morning after the bombing, a team from the Australian Federal Police offered to assist the Indonesians with the inquiry. That same day, officers discovered the Yamaha motorcycle used by the terrorists dumped at a nearby mosque. They tracked down the shop where the bike had been purchased, and witnesses there provided enough information for police sketches. Still, authorities had no names and no hints of where else to look.

  The investigators thought they had obtained critical evidence when the twisted piece of chassis was discovered on the roof of a nearby bank. If they could track down the owner of the car, they knew, they stood a fair chance of closing in on the perpetrators.