Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs

by Walker, Johnny

  So when I said good-bye to Chief Tatt, it was with the full knowledge I might never see him again. We shook hands, hugged each other, and stepped back, an invisible wall already rising between us.

  “Good-bye, brother,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Johnny.”

  I watched him walk away, not realizing I was seeing my future striding across the tarmac with him.

  9

  Missions and Decisions

  HOW DOES A dream change from wisp to flesh? And more importantly, why?

  I had never thought of living in the United States, let alone taking my family and becoming citizens there, until Chief Tatt mentioned it in 2005. There was no actual way for it to happen. I didn’t even want to leave Iraq.

  And yet . . .

  And yet the possibility of going to America began to slip into my consciousness. The things I’d admired about America when I was younger—movies, mostly, and basketball, and music—were joined by a more mature notion: the idea of living not just in safety but in a place where I would be free.

  I had never dreamed of becoming an American. Was it because I loved my life in Iraq so much? Or was it because the possibility had never occurred to me?

  More the latter. Absolutely the latter: my world had revolved around Mosul. And I saw no real alternative to Iraq. When I thought about moving my family to someplace safe, I thought of other parts of the country or, occasionally, Syria or another place in the Middle East. All were equally unrealistic. Life there might have been marginally safer for us, but we would be cut off from our friends and relatives even more severely than Soheila was when she went to the villages in the west to hide. And no part of the Middle East seemed very inviting. The small amount of increased safety wasn’t worth the complications and problems. How would I make a living? How would we deal with the lost contact with friends?

  Despite its problems, Iraq seemed the better bet. Surely things would get better.

  But as the war and devastation continued, with my own life and my family’s threatened, I started to think of other possible futures. If Iraq couldn’t be made safe, and if I couldn’t find a place of safety within it, what should I do? Where should I store my hope?

  Did I dare dream of going to America? The possibility Chief Tatt had mentioned was simply that—a possibility. If it became a reality—if someone came to me with plane tickets to get us all to the States—would I go?

  No, I thought. I am an Iraqi.

  But the idea kept creeping back, sneaking into my thoughts when I wasn’t on guard. It tickled my old interests in all things American. A hope for the future was taking shape before I even dared consciously admit it.

  THROUGH 2005, our targets were mostly Sunni militants, mujahideen who had been Ba’ath Party members or Fedayeen members, or men who were recruited by or somehow under the umbrella of al-Qaeda in Iraq. But as the conflict continued, the groups I worked with were assigned more and more to hit Shia radicals as well. Iraq, meanwhile, was a place of quasi–civil war, with Shia attacking Sunni and Sunni attacking Shia, and the Americans stuck in the middle. Depending on where you were, the Iraqi army and police might side with the Shia, or they might simply stand back and try not to get killed.

  The pace of the missions continued to increase. The overall command tried different strategies across the country to instill peace, or at least give it a chance to grow. From my perspective, the war became a continuous run of missions, one after the other. We’d brief, we’d go out, I’d talk to the people. Hopefully we’d find the jackpot and bring him back. Then back at the base, I would interview him, trying to get more intelligence so we could go out again. These post-operation questionings became more important in this period, as the SEALs tried to develop and act on their own intelligence.

  Waiting while the assault team cleared a house to make sure it was safe was always one of the worst parts of a mission for me. I wanted to be with the assaulters, the guys who went in first—I always felt that they needed me there, to talk to the people they might find inside the house, to avoid misunderstandings or just dangerous situations. But I wasn’t supposed to go in until the place was “cleared”—declared safe from immediate ambush or IEDs. Usually this only took a few minutes, but those were the longest minutes of the mission for me.

  At times, I’d wait near or in the garage, as quiet as I could be, listening for any clue of what was going on inside. Other times I’d be farther away, back out at the wall near the street, crouched and craning my ear to hear either the radio or the sounds around me. Every so often I’d creep up and slide inside the doorway, ready to help if needed. Some of the officers in the head shed—the SEAL slang for command or headquarters—would have had a fit if they’d found out, but whatever punishment they gave me would have been nothing compared to how I would have felt if one of my guys was hurt.

  I’d wait, badly needing a cigarette. The time . . . would pass . . . v-e-r-y . . . s-l-o-w-l-y . . .

  Then, finally, there’d come a shout from inside:

  “Send the terp! Where’s Johnny?”

  I didn’t think of it as running into danger. I thought of myself running to help the men who were my friends. That designation now applied to all SEALs. I’d learned that SEALs were different from other soldiers. Their toughness and their loyalty to one another made them accept each other, and they had adopted me as one of them.

  Very late one night the platoon boarded a half-dozen Hummers and headed to a house intel had said was being used by al-Qaeda as a safe house. We stopped close enough to run to the house from the trucks. As the area was secured, an assault team went to the door and broke it open. They rushed inside, waking the sleeping occupants. Within moments they had cleared the house, meeting no resistance.

  “Johnny!” the LPO, or lead petty officer, shouted.

  I went inside. The SEALs had found the homeowner, who was already telling them loudly that he had nothing to do with the insurgency.

  I don’t know how much they understood, but he was fairly convincing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought they’d made a mistake.

  I’d learned to be skeptical. With one group of SEALs watching him and another searching the house, I went to talk to the rest of the family. There were two or three kids along with his wife and his mother and father.

  The adults were clearly religious. Both of the men had long beards, and the women wore very modest, traditional clothing. There were little signs around the house that the family was very observant, the same way that crosses and holy pictures would tip off a Christian family. But some of their answers didn’t quite match that; they downplayed their beliefs, as if trying to indicate that religion wasn’t important to them.

  It might be nothing, I thought to myself. First of all, a person might be very religious—be they Shia or Sunni—and not be a member of the insurgency. And there was always the chance that my perception was merely skewed: I’d gone in looking for an insurgent, and so I might be reading innocent items as clues that I was right.

  I talked to the family members for a while, then went back to the man the SEALs thought might be the jackpot. I talked to him about insurgent activity in the neighborhood. He started changing his answers, altering what he’d said earlier—again, not an indication of guilt, but enough to make me feel something was going on that I didn’t know.

  I left and went to the mission commander. He was ready to leave.

  “I think they’re hiding something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t add up. Have you searched the house?”

  “We didn’t find anything.” The chief paused. “Go ahead. Talk to him some more. We’ll search the place again.”

  I went back inside and asked the suspect if there were weapons in the house.

  “No weapons. No weapons.” He held out his hands.

  Most homes in Iraq had at least one weapon, often an AK-47, used for protection. That was allowed and wasn’t suspicious—if anything, the opp
osite was true: if a man didn’t have a gun, I would wonder why not. I was about to give up questioning him when a SEAL came bounding down the stairs with a Russian sniper rifle in his hand. He’d found it hidden in a closet.

  Sniper rifles were not generally allowed, but occasionally there were exceptions. This might be true less than 10 percent of the time; in the rest of the cases, the gun was being used against Americans or Iraqis. I decided to play it hard; if he had an explanation he would tell me quickly.

  “Well, look at this,” I said, taking the gun and showing it to the man. “You said you had no gun. Do we understand each other now? You are lying to me. Do not lie—tell me the truth.”

  “We are both Muslims,” blurted the man. “They are infidels. We are on the same side. Why are you pushing my family? Why are you persecuting me? I am trying to help my religion.”

  “Why are you telling me, I am Muslim?” I answered. “If you are Muslim, and you are killing people, then I am not Muslim. A religion of murderers is not my religion. We do not understand God the same way. Don’t play this game with me. Tell me what else you have in this house.”

  “The gun belongs to a friend of my son’s,” said the man. “He brought it to keep it with us. I told him he shouldn’t, but he didn’t listen.”

  I was sure that was a lie as well. I kept talking to him.

  Soon I saw my suspicions were right. Having found the hidden gun, the SEALs started checking the walls of the house. They soon discovered a secret panel. Behind it was a laptop computer, documents, videos, a black mask, and explosives. The man was a leader in the militia; the sniper rifle turned out to be the least of the evidence against him.

  By the time we had everything out of the house, the sun was just about to rise. It had been a long night, but a successful mission—one jackpot, one safe house, and a lot of insurgent material under American control. It was a good mission.

  I got better and better at spotting liars. A few minutes of conversation—a glance this way or that, a few evasive answers—and I would know. It wasn’t an instant thing, ever. Anyone whose house we entered reacted initially with shock. But then as they began to relax, it was easier to judge reactions.

  ON ANOTHER MISSION, we worked with an American army unit that was acting as the lead. Our job was to surround and secure a Sunni mosque that intelligence said was being used by a group of al-Qaeda insurgents. The soldiers would then enter and look for the ringleader of a terror cell said to be operating there.

  For the SEALs, this was supposed to be an easy job, if any of these operations could be considered “easy”—I don’t know if that word really applies to anything you do in a war zone. The SEALs cleared their assignments, then stood by as the lead American unit went into the mosque and began looking for their suspect.

  With the situation under control, I stood outside with one of the SEAL chiefs and had a smoke. The minutes passed. We waited, and we waited.

  Morning came, and we were still waiting.

  Always in the back of my mind, and I would imagine in everyone else’s, is the fact that time is an enemy during a mission. You start out as the hunter, searching for your target. You get to the site, you clear it, you remove threats: things go smoothly.

  But the longer you stay, the more chance there is that the tables will be turned. People may see your trucks or hear some noise, or perhaps someone in the house doesn’t answer a cell phone or doesn’t show up at a specified time—any of a hundred things might tip off a neighbor or a comrade that you are there. That in turn might tell them to stay away. Or it might tell them to attack. We were always targets. Baghdad was filled with many enemies.

  That night I milled around with the others, wasting time. Finally, I went to the SEAL in charge and asked what was going on.

  “Sorry, Johnny,” he said. “They’re still looking for their jackpot. They have a bunch of guys inside but can’t figure out who the bad guy is.”

  “Fuck it,” I told him. “Give me ten minutes. I will find him.”

  “Johnny—”

  “I tell you, I will find him.”

  “Okay, Johnny.” The chief shrugged. “I’ll give it a try.”

  He got on the radio and talked to the person in charge of the operation inside. The army commander agreed to give me a chance and told him to bring me inside.

  Maybe they were desperate, or maybe not. They certainly had nothing to lose at that point. Anyway, I went inside and found the commander.

  “Okay, this business, leave it to me,” I told the army commander. “You want your jackpot, and I want to go back. So let me do this.”

  The commander looked at me doubtfully. Finally he shrugged and told me to go ahead.

  “I need support from my guys,” I added, meaning the SEALs. “Just let me handle it.”

  “All yours,” he said, or something along those lines. “It’s all yours.”

  About twenty Iraqi men had been inside the mosque when the American units arrived. I took the IDs that had been confiscated and looked them over. It wasn’t always easy to tell the real ones from the fakes, and most of the ones I looked at that night looked real. I sorted through them a few times, culling maybe a half dozen that I thought might be phony. One in particular stood out, though the name on it was nothing like the jackpot’s.

  I took the IDs and sorted them into an order so that I had a few of the ones I thought were good on the top. Then I went into the room where the men were all being held and started talking in my loudest, most official voice.

  “Hey, everyone,” I told them. “I am representing the Iraqi government. And the man with me, he is representing the American government. We apologize for what happened. We have made a mistake. We had information that you guys were building IEDs and had car bombs here.”

  The men in the room began to relax. They knew that there were no car bombs in the building or anywhere on the grounds nearby. They were definitely in the clear.

  “We deeply apologize,” I continued. “This was a mistake. The person who gave us this information will be punished. To make it up to you, we will apologize to each person individually and give you money for your trouble.”

  I looked at the first ID card, and called the man’s name. He came up; I shook his hand and apologized.

  “You will have to sign a receipt for the money,” I told him, waving him toward the door where some of the other soldiers with us were waiting. “They’ll give it to you there and you can be on your way.”

  He left, a little nervously I think, but eager to get home—and collect a reward for his trouble.

  Same with the next. And the next.

  Finally, I called the name of the suspect—not the name on the phony ID, but the jackpot’s real name.

  The man started forward, then hurriedly leaned back.

  Too late. We’d found our jackpot. Or rather the army’s.

  He soon confessed, and we turned him over to the soldiers.

  A few hours later, back at the base, I was trying to sleep in the trailer when one of the SEALs came over and pounded on my door.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he told me when I let him in. “They want to trade. They offered us all of their interpreters for you.”

  “Who?”

  “The army. They think you’re worth more than everyone they’ve ever worked with.”

  I guess they thought it was like American baseball, where you can trade players between teams. The SEALs thought it was a great joke. But I didn’t exactly understand what was going on. Was I being moved to the army?

  “I have to go?” I asked.

  “No,” said my friend. “We’re keeping you for ourselves.”

  When I figured it out, I was flattered. The SEALs thought it was hilarious, and started joking that they wouldn’t take me on any missions with other units; they didn’t want to make them jealous or risk me being kidnapped by our own forces.

  THERE WERE DIFFERENT groups working against the government and the Americans in Baghd
ad. The SEALs felt it was useful to know what group various targets were allied with and tailor their strategies accordingly, though in my opinion you couldn’t rely on intelligence to get the information straight. And I usually preferred not to even know—I could make my own assessment, usually more accurately.

  It wasn’t that I valued spontaneity. There was simply no sense preparing based on intel that might or might not be true. It wasn’t just that you were wasting your time with this information; it could easily send you into a situation with a preconceived notion that was all wrong. It was always better to work with simple information and make up a plan on the spot.

  Similarly, my best tricks were the ones that came directly from the circumstances. I used different variations of the common ones—using the jackpot’s real name once he was relaxed, for example, or asking kids to ID who was who.

  One of the other tricks was to make people feel as if they were at ease. Ironically, one of the best ways to do that was to accuse them of being something they weren’t. If they knew they could disprove it easily, they were much more likely to let their guard down in other areas.

  Say, for example, we were looking for someone affiliated with a Shia militia. If I was sure the people I was talking to were Shiite—their names or clothes would often give them away—I might tell them we had information that they were with al-Qaeda. They would then set out to prove they weren’t, loudly proclaiming their Shiite ties. That information could then lead to information I could use to definitely identify the person we were after. It was simple mental algebra: Oh, he suspects that I am A, the guy might think, and clearly I am not. All I have to do is show him that.

  Another simple trick would be to say that I was looking for someone other than the person I wanted. For example, I might claim to be looking for Tom Jones when I was actually looking for John Doe; when the suspect proved he wasn’t Tom Jones by showing me an ID saying John Doe, I had him.