Operation Dark Heart

by Anthony Shaffer

  We all knew that harsher-than-normal interrogation techniques had been approved, and if you really wanted to do something, you could probably get approval to do it, but I didn’t—and still don’t—believe such methods work. John and I were trained interrogators, and that wasn’t the way we operated. In fact, the FBI was on the lookout for cases of harsh interrogations in Afghanistan, and there were some prosecutions that came out of their limited effort to curtail abuse even in these early days of the war.

  Later in my deployment to Afghanistan, I came face-to-face with the program of enhanced methods of interrogation—if you want to call that “interrogation.”

  We knew we were up against the clock. The helicopter was now due back for us in thirty-five minutes, if we could squeeze enough useful information out of the prisoner.

  We introduced ourselves. I announced myself as Tony, an intelligence officer from the Department of Defense. John said he was from the FBI. Tim said nothing and stayed in the background, working his way through a bag of beef jerky.

  We each leaned against a desk in the room and stared down at him for an uncomfortable minute. Then John asked the obvious question, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to visit my cousin,” he said.

  “We understand you are here to visit your cousin,” John said, “but, obviously, your cousin has been arrested based on his activities. So what are you doing here?”

  “I assumed it was safe here since the Americans were here,” he answered. He spoke English well, with only a slight accent. That lent credence to his story that he was well educated.

  “Sir, this is a war zone. People are dying every day,” I said.

  “I wanted to come visit my family. Yes, I know there is a war on, but it is not so bad in *******”

  We weren’t getting very far. It was a freakin’ war zone in ******—this was the front line of the war. Who was he kidding?

  “You were captured with your cousin. Your cousin is a known operative—he is going to Guantanamo—you are now on the same path,” I said after he repeated several more times that he was just here for a visit.

  “I cannot tell you things that I do not know.”

  OK, so he was sticking to his story. I decided to lay on the threats.

  “If you do not tell us what you know, you will be going to Guantanamo.”

  He didn’t much like that. “But I’m ** ******** *******; I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You did do something wrong.” I pointed out what should have become obvious to him by now. “You were with your cousin when he was captured. That makes you a combatant under the current rules of engagement.”

  Ghaffari persisted in saying that he was just here to visit his family. OK, fine. We would use that against him.

  “If you value your family,” I said, “you’ll need to provide us information on your cousin.”

  We could just begin to make out the whoop-whoop-whoop of the approaching helicopter. We’d gotten nowhere. John and I glanced at each other. We read our mutual decision by the expressions on our faces.

  We were staying.

  John turned to Ghaffari. “We’re done for now, but we’re going to come back to talk to you again.”

  He nodded, still gazing at us with this innocent deer-in-the-headlights look.

  Visiting his family, my ass, I thought. He knows what is going on with his cousin at minimum and possibly even more.

  We left the room and conferred.

  “We’re not leaving,” John told Tim.

  Tim went into the * Team’s headquarters room and asked them to radio the helicopter to direct it not to land and to proceed back to Bagram. As we walked past the entrance of the room, we could hear someone tell the helicopter, “The packages are staying. No need to land; you can return to base.”

  We agreed we had done enough for tonight. The Recon Team walked us to their “visitor” tents—a permanent set of GP Medium (general purpose) tents stuck between the wall of the fort and their makeshift bunkers, showed us where our cots were, and we pulled out our ponchos.

  This was not going to be a cakewalk.

  9

  THE INTERROGATION

  WE managed to sleep about three hours before the unforgiving Afghan sun awoke us as its heat bled through the roof of the tent. It was still near pitch-black in the tent, yet you could feel the heat just as if you were under a sun lamp.

  The two Recon intel guys who were our hosts were already up and about—with as little sleep as us—working their sources to obtain information that might help us in our interrogation. One of the main focuses was the status and location of the missing **** that was one of the primary objectives of their raid that had netted Ali.

  The sky was clear and a brilliant blue as we sat down on a berm of sandbags, near the fleet of Humvees, to eat our breakfast of eggs, waffles, and bacon. Food was generally good—even at the front.

  After the first bite of bacon and a quick sip of coffee, John and I were already sweating as we started to go over our strategy. We came up with a master list of questions. ** ****** ** *** ** * ******** ** **** *** *** *** ******** ***** ******* ***** ***** ** * ********** *** ******* *********** ** *** *** *** ***** ** ******* *** *******. *** ******* ***** ******** ** *** *** ***** ******** ** **** *** ***** *** ******* ****** **** ** ***** **** ** ** ********** ********* *** ****** ****** ***** ** ***** * **** ***.

  First task: determine whether he was really from ************ ********. That was my first focus. We went in and immediately got rolling.

  “I live in ************” I told Ghaffari. “I’ll know if you’re lying, so you might as well tell me where you are from if you are not from there.”

  He gave me a description of the neighborhood, and I quizzed him about a dozen local landmarks. The library down the street. The school he said his children attended. Two nearby grocery stores, including the one near the library and the other next to the gas station. He described the nearest gas station. He said he liked the one by the grocery store the best because the service was better. (He was right.)

  Finally, after about forty-five minutes of intense but polite drilling, I gave John a small nod. He knew ************ That much was true.

  Now we were ready to refocus on why he was here.

  “So what are you doing with your cousin in a war zone?” John asked.

  He repeated his answer from last night. “Visiting my family. I thought it was safe.”

  “This is not a safe place,” I said. “People are dying every day. How do you think it is safe?”

  He persisted. “I wanted to come back and visit my family. It is not that bad in ******—and I heard the ******** army had won and everything was secure.”

  “We know your cousin had ******* with him the night of the raid. Where did he get it?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” he said. “You must believe me.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not. We are told there is no way you could not have known about the purpose of the meeting or your cousin having ******** Who were the men who were with him that night?”

  He shook his head. “I am a good ********* * **** ******** If I knew, I would tell you. I simply do not know.”

  We circled back around and talked about his background. He told us his family had moved **** *********** ** ****** ** **** to escape the Soviet occupation and had worked to survive there. He was younger **** *** ******* by ***** ******

  “What did your cousin do there?” I asked.

  The answers got vague. Something about working in a government ministry.

  “How did you end up in the ****** ******?” John asked.

  He had found a way from ****** ** *******, and he laid out a story that could be mostly verified. He had left **** in the late ’80s and moved to ***********, where he was a taxi driver. He had a **** *** *** ********* We would check to see if his kids were enrolled in the school he claimed they were. A fact that would be easily verifiable.

  We wound up with some detailed questio
ning of his associates in ********—the “circle of knowledgability.” Who were his friends? Who and where were his other associates? Who had he talked to about coming here? Why was his wife not here?

  He was reluctant to give up the names of his ******** friends and associates.

  “Look,” I said. “If you have nothing to hide, then the more truthful you can be, the more information you can give us that we can verify, the better it is for you. But if you hold out on us …”

  I leaned forward. Not close into his face, but it was meant to be a clearly menacing move. “I’m going to send you to Guantanamo.”

  He rocked back from his seat on the floor, an expression of shock rolling over his face. While I had mentioned this as a possibility last night, stating it again in the light of day in a more threatening way had a visceral effect on him.

  I had pre-cleared to use the threat of sending Ghaffari to Guantanamo. If needed, I had been given the authority to detain him and send him to a wholly different life than the one he knew in ************ In Afghanistan, the military held the authority over detainees, so I had the authority to do so as a member of DoD in a war zone. John had no such power because he was domestic law enforcement.

  “We’re taking a break now,” I told him. “You, sir, are not being truthful, and you will have to make a choice—soon—as to how much you love ******** or wish to cover up for your cousin.”

  Ghaffari pleaded. The mention of Guantanamo had gotten to him. ** **** *******,” he said urgently. “I love my life in *******. As God is my witness, I am telling you the truth.”

  I pressed harder. “I’m sorry. You are not telling the whole truth. Until we’re convinced you are, there is a pretty good chance I will send you to Guantanamo. We can’t take the chance of sending you back to the ****** ****** if we believe there is a link between you and a terrorist organization in Afghanistan. So you need to think about the fact that, right now, your next stop is not ***********. It’s Guantanamo, and your life in the ****** ****** with your family, will be over.”

  I wanted him to chew on that over lunch. In fact, I wanted it to ruin his lunch.

  He looked forlorn. The reality of his situation was sinking in. He couldn’t just say a few things about loving ******* and go home.

  After three hours of questioning, we had a pretty good idea of who Arash Ghaffari claimed he was. John could send the info back to the FBI to verify his *********** and ********* over the periods of time he had described to us—and the smaller details regarding his children, their enrollment in school, and so on. Still, we hadn’t come away with anything about his stay in Afghanistan that we didn’t already know. He knew we were serious, and visiting his cousin had imperiled him. Now it was time to allow for the grim reality of a possible life in Guantanamo to sit like a granite boulder on his mind.

  At lunch, sitting outside the compound in the dry heat, we conferred with the Recon guys, while Tim chomped on his ever-present supply of beef jerky, bags of which magically appeared constantly from his DCU cargo pockets. He had told me his wife had sent him a footlocker full of the stuff.

  John, who was former Recon, found out while he was at the * Team’s HQ that several members of his former team were in the area, and he made arrangements for us to go meet them. He was able to get on the computer system to Bagram to pass info. Once at Bagram, his questions were relayed to the other agents and on to the FBI Washington Field Office to verify the basic details of Arash’s story.

  John and I walked through the morning’s interrogation. Even though Arash Ghaffari clearly lived in ***********, we did not know if there was something more to him and his links to a known terror enabler. That just made the picture scarier. Was he part of a sleeper cell and were his associates part of that cell as well?

  We agreed to focus on pushing him more on *********** and his associates and contacts. We did not want anyone stateside to overreact or panic. We wanted to be cautious—and right.

  After lunch, we walked back in and gave him a cold bottle of water and sat wordless while he drank it and glanced nervously back and forth at us. He received water regularly, but it was room temperature at best. He clearly enjoyed the cooled bottle. We didn’t say anything; just let the awkward silence settle like a blanket over the room.

  John looked at me, and I began.

  “You told us you love your life in *******,” I said. John and I had decided these would be our opening remarks. “We agree with you, but if you want to protect your life and the lives of your wife and children there, you really need to be honest with us.”

  We decided to throw him off balance and switch between interrogating him about *********** and ****** without telegraphing our line of questioning.

  It was apparent that he valued his family and wanted to return to them. That was the carrot we could dangle in front of him—to allow him to go back home.

  “I understand how important your family is and how much you want to be with them. But we’ve talked to the Recon troops who did the raid, and I gotta tell you, you’re not being up front with us,” I told him. “We know for a fact that while you may not have been in the room with the other individuals, you know what happened with the ******** and until you tell us, we consider you part of the conspiracy.”

  He was quiet for a full second, trying to measure how much we really knew. “I would never do that,” he finally said. “I wasn’t involved with what my cousin was doing. I have no interest in doing anything to hurt ******** * **** ** **** *******

  He was becoming emotional. His voice rose, and he rocked back and forth in his chair. “I want to go back to ********”

  This was obviously a huge motivator for him. The more we mentioned taking that away from him, the more agitated he became. We wanted to use that. We didn’t bring up Guantanamo again for a while. If he thought we were sending him there no matter what, then he would just shut down. We had to delicately employ the carrot (home) and the stick (Gitmo) with careful shifts in questioning.

  Throughout the long day of interrogation, some important facts became clear. Ali Ghaffari, it was evident, was a real father figure to *** ******* ******** ***** ******* had been killed in the initial days of the Soviet occupation when Arash was in his early teens, and Ali had taken over raising his ******* ******** This was one of the reasons Arash was so protective of his cousin. The psychological process of transference had occurred.

  Arash Ghaffari also kept repeating how much he loved his life in ******* and how important his family was to him.

  Ya can’t keep both, buddy, I thought to myself—and I still couldn’t tell which he’d pick in the end.

  “Arash, that’s well and good, but you’re not helping us here,” I told him. Our biggest concern was what was going on in the ****** ******—if anything.

  We kept reiterating that he would have to tell us his recollection of the evening of the raid: what he was doing, who was in the compound, ties they had to him and to his cousin. The names of the people. Everything. We would keep going over and over the evening and what he knew about the ***** Then we would return to focus on *********** and get him to talk about his associates there. The questioning on *********** gave us more information to pass along to the FBI but, just as important, it focused his mind on how important that place was to him.

  By the end of the session, all three of us were exhausted, but we had established some important facts. He had a clear recollection of the raid and he knew names, although he wouldn’t give them to us. While he wouldn’t fully admit it, there were indications that he knew what had happened to the ******

  Guantanamo was very real, and his family in *********** was a huge emotional issue for him. That was motivating him to talk to us, but he was also trying to protect his cousin.

  After midnight and after finishing off the last meeting with the Recon intel guys and John, I decided to check on things in ************

  I gave Rina a call on the Iridium satellite phone. One of the smarter things DoD had decided was to
allow the **** ******** to use the phones for morale calls. We’d often allowed the 10th Mountain troops to borrow our satellite phones so they could call home, too.

  Since Rina had my power of attorney in the ****** ******, I wanted to check on my direct-deposit paychecks, how the house was, and that kind of stuff.

  It was a melancholy phone call. We talked about what had happened with our breakup. Even though it was over, we both felt sad about it. I had to admit that I did miss her. I had the impression she felt the same way. We had agreed that, when we decided not to get married, it was time to move on. She was doing her own thing. I had heard from a mutual friend that she was going out with an Australian army officer who was visiting the States. This fact didn’t exactly thrill me but, then again, it wasn’t my business.

  I couldn’t tell her about the **** ******* who had been captured and about the potential there was of a sleeper agent hanging around ************ It would only have panicked her and, besides, we hadn’t proven the case for or against him yet. We had a long way to go.

  In the midst of the conversation, I heard a whoosh and a thump. Then another. Then another.

  “Rina, hold on a second,” I said. By the sound, the rounds were hitting well short.

  “What the hell is that?” I said to one of the ** guys hanging out near the gate entrance in his shorts and flip-flops. By now, the sky was illuminated by a 10th Mountain flare as they prepared for countermortar fire.

  “Oh, the Taliban are mortaring us,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry much—they are terrible shots.” He headed for the shower. No concern there.

  Now I could hear the first volley of 10th Mountain mortars firing back at their best estimate of the Taliban mortar’s origins.

  “Shouldn’t we all be in shelters or something?” I yelled to him.

  “Nah,” he said. “They usually don’t get close.”

  Usually they don’t get close? Oh, that was reassuring.

  I told Rina that we were being mortared and I had to go, and asked her to make sure to look for a package from me for Alexander. The mortaring here had kind of panicked her. As we were signing off, she surprised me by saying, “I do miss you.” It caught me off guard. I dodged the comment. But I missed her, too.