How to Break a Terrorist

by Matthew Alexander

  Do I detect just a hint of distrust? I guess that’s to be expected. I know this man. I know how he thinks now. If I am very careful, I can outmaneuver him and turn all of the day’s negatives into positives.

  “Are you ready to continue?” I ask.

  “Yes, I am, but I have a question first.”

  “Anything, my friend. What is on your mind?”

  “Do you really have the authority to negotiate with me?”

  I lean back and say, “Ahh. Is that what is bothering you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Abu Haydar, I’m going to tell you something, and I think you’ll get the picture.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I stand up and pull my chair next to his so that we are sitting almost side by side, facing opposite directions. Our faces are a foot apart, and I lower my voice to almost a whisper.

  “Not everyone here works for the same people. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The subtext here is simple.

  I’ll give him just a little more. “Some of those who work for a different agency from mine have different motives, my friend.”

  He looks cautious, but at the same time, very intrigued. “What are those different motives, Dr. Matthew?”

  “I will be blunt with you, Abu Haydar. Not everyone wants to work with Sunnis.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. That is why my boss in Washington sent me here.”

  “I see.” His voice goes vanilla again. He’s studying me with those unbelievably perceptive eyes.

  I decide to continue.

  “I have a certain authority here that others do not. I have the ability to work with Sunnis. Other people resent that. Now, do you still want to work with me?”

  Another pregnant pause. I’m naturally impatient, so this is starting to drive me crazy. But I don’t speak. My face remains cordial and earnest.

  He strokes his beard. He nods once. “Yes. I want to work with you.”

  “Okay. I want to bring you into our program and get you out of here. I will take care of you. But I need you to do something for me.”

  His face goes blank. His eyes shine with suspicion. “What?”

  “You must never tell anyone here that we have made a deal. It will be our secret and a secret between us and my bosses in Washington.”

  I’ve just made him a part of the conspiracy.

  He nods his head in a knowing, worldly way. “I understand completely, Dr. Matthew. I will say nothing of our arrangement.”

  “Good. I must depend on you for that. If you talk to anyone about this, I will have to call off our deal, and Iraq will suffer for it.”

  “I want to join your program. You have my word.”

  “Okay. Here is what’s going to happen.”

  Now he leans forward. I lower my voice to an even softer whisper.

  “I have to fly back to Washington today to convince my bosses that you are worth the risk. I have a good feeling.”

  “I understand.”

  For the next hour, we discuss al Masri. Abu Haydar provides more details of how he operates, and I take notes. He’s giving us a gold mine of information. At the end of our session, I tell him, “While I am gone, I need to know you will work with the others here.”

  His face looks sour. “I would prefer only to talk to you.”

  “I will be gone. But I will monitor the reports and check on your progress. Don’t worry, I will return in a few days, and we’ll talk again.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  “So do I, my friend. So do I.”

  Thirty

  STASIS

  LATER THAT DAY, I sit down with Tom and Mary for a strategy session. I am amazed at the difference. Instead of scoffing at what I’ve got to say, Mary listens quietly and appears to internalize what I say. “Look, Abu Haydar is a man who needs his ego constantly stroked. Do it in subtle ways, and he will respond.”

  “How?” Mary asks.

  “Small compliments. Make him feel important. Build up respect; don’t try to attack him.”

  “Okay,” Tom says.

  As for Lenny, I can’t get him off Abu Haydar at night. I have no control over the night shift, and Roger’s already ruled against me on that. Whenever we pass in the halls, he doesn’t even acknowledge me. I do the same. I cannot respect a man who is willing to sell out his mission to settle a personal score.

  Over the next four interrogations, Abu Haydar refuses to give Lenny anything. With Tom and Mary, it is a different story. Little by little, he shares enticing tidbits of information.

  But he doesn’t move us up the ladder. By day four, little progress has been made. I wish I could do these interrogations myself, but that will never happen. I must work in the background.

  I’ve got to get him moving again. That night, I walk back to the cellblock and ask the guard to let me into Abu Haydar’s cell. I find him resting on a mat placed atop a concrete slab that serves as his bed.

  The guard steps outside but remains close. I cannot tip my hand to him. Not now.

  “Dr. Matthew, how are you doing?”

  “I am fine. I have just returned from Washington.”

  “And what did you learn?” He no longer acts. We are coconspirators now.

  I whisper into his ear, “I’ve talked with my bosses. Most of them think that you are a good candidate to join the program. So far, though, a decision has not been made.”

  He looks disappointed.

  “How close am I?”

  I pretend to consider this. Finally, I tell him, “I would say you are at about forty percent.”

  He stifles a gasp. Now, he’s worried. “Only forty?”

  “If you help us, then I think you will get approved.”

  “Okay. I will.” He nods valiantly, but his face is still a picture of concern.

  I put a hand on his shoulder, “Abu Haydar, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  He smiles back at me, but I can see the Casablanca reference is lost on him.

  The next day, Mary and Tom sit down with him. I watch from the Hollywood room. Abu Haydar tells them, “I have a friend. He is an imam and he is my friend and mentor.”

  Tom appears excited. “Who is this friend?”

  Abu Haydar ignores the question. “We have been best friends for most of our lives. We have studied Islam together for fourteen years.”

  Then he drops a bomb, “He knows many things.”

  Mary and Tom try to get him to define that, but he won’t.

  After they go in circles for awhile again, Mary asks him, “What is your friend’s name.”

  He will not answer. Instead he tells Tom, “You know, I am very bored in my cell.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I wonder if it might be possible to get a book to read.”

  Tom hedges, “I will look into it. What sort of book would you like?”

  “I am very fond of Harry Potter.”

  From the Hollywood room, I can’t help but break out laughing. Imagine if J. K. Rowling knew that one of Iraq’s master terrorists was a fan of her work. I later approve this incentive, and Tom finds a copy of a Harry Potter book in the compound. It is delivered to his cell.

  The impasse continues for almost two weeks. What has he told us? Is his friend higher or lower on the ladder? Toward the end of the third week, I visit him again in his cell. This time, I find him engrossed in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He’s reading it a second time.

  We need him to give up al Masri. But he deflects every question with vague answers. “Last I heard, he was in Ramadi,” was his last answer as to the whereabouts of Al Qaida’s master bomber.

  “Hello, my friend,” I say as I enter his cell. This is my third visit here. The last time I sat down with him, I told him he was at sixty percent.

  “Dr. Matthew, thank you for coming to see me.”

  “My pleasure. How is the book?”

  “Oh, very good. I love H
arry Potter. These books are so imaginative.”

  “I like them too. That one’s my favorite,” I reply.

  He looks ready to discuss the book with me, but I haven’t actually read it so I hurry to change the subject, whispering so the guard won’t hear. “I want you to know that I have some good news.”

  “Really? Please share it.”

  “You’re doing great work. I’ve got everyone on board except the chief of our agency. The others have signed off on you joining our program.”

  “That is excellent news. How close am I?”

  “You’re at ninety percent. We just need one more push to bring you to a hundred percent, and then my boss will be convinced that you can be trusted.”

  He thinks this over. Finally, he whispers into my ear, “Dr. Matthew, later today I will give you something that will change his mind.”

  “I hope so.” He takes my hand and squeezes it in a friendly gesture. As I get up to leave, I tell him, “You know, Abu Haydar, I want to you play a role in the future of Iraq.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Matthew. Just wait. Just wait.”

  Thirty-one

  THE UNKNOWN IMAM

  MAY 15, 2006

  MY FRIEND IS Sheikh Abu ’Abd al Rahman. His mosque is the one in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad.”

  Tom and Mary look on quietly. Abu Haydar’s started talking.

  “He is Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s personal spiritual advisor.”

  In the Hollywood room, my pen falls out of my hand.

  Abu Haydar is not finished, “If you want Zarqawi, watch al Rahman.”

  He’s just given us our first direct lead to Zarqawi.

  “What should we watch for?” asks Mary.

  “Look for him to drive in a white sedan. If he stops and changes cars, and that car is a blue sedan, he is on his way to see Zarqawi. He will switch cars in the middle of his trip.”

  In the ’gator pit, Abu Haydar’s information ignites a flurry of activity. Randy’s already passed it up to the task force commander. We send all available assets to the Mansur Mosque. In the meantime, more assets are mobilized for the chase.

  We get our first break when we identify al Rahman leaving the mosque. After that, he goes nowhere without American eyes watching.

  At first, nothing happens. Days pass. We wait and watch. On May 31, I walk into the ’gator pit and see everyone clustered around computer monitors and the flat-screen television.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Steve.

  He leans over and whispers, “This is a live feed from a surveillance asset. We’re watching al Rahman. He just switched cars to a blue sedan.”

  This is our moment. I’m captivated by the street scene on the monitors. The blue sedan stair-steps around Baghdad. The asset follows it through all its maneuvers.

  The blue sedan makes another sudden turn. It drives behind a tall building and disappears.

  “No! NO!” somebody moans.

  The camera pans up and down the street. No sign of the car. The asset flies around the building, camera panning this way and that. Nothing. The blue sedan has simply vanished. Along with it went our best shot yet of capturing Zarqawi.

  Randy sinks into his desk and utters a curse. He leaves for home in just a few days. Edith, the analyst who doesn’t believe Al Qaida operatives maintain their family ties, is scheduled to take over his role. He looks absolutely devastated. He’s devoted the better part of three years to this pursuit, and to come this close and miss must be like a knife to the gut.

  At least, that’s what it feels like to me.

  Thirty-two

  THE SEVENTH OF JUNE

  THE ASSETS PICK UP al Rahman again at his mosque a week later. He can’t even go to the bathroom now without being watched. Every house he visits, every location he drives to in his white sedan is noted. If we get another opportunity, nobody in Zarqawi’s inner circle will be safe.

  This morning Cliff comes running into the ’gator pit. “They’ve got the blue car again!”

  We switch to the live feed from the surveillance asset. The blue car weaves through Baghdad traffic. At one point it stops at a house, but al Rahman does not get out. Our SF teams are on a hair trigger. The moment they get the order and location, the helicopters will be off and racing.

  The blue sedan starts moving again. The driver negotiates northeast Baghdad—a heavily Shia area. Then he continues outside the city limits.

  “Which way is he going?” somebody asks. We all shrug. It’s impossible to tell from the feed.

  Cliff stands next to me, “Damn, Matt. I hope we get him this time.”

  I say nothing. I’m superstitious. I just wish Randy were here, but he’s already left.

  The car drives down a highway for almost forty minutes. It turns off the road into a small neighborhood and pulls up to a house. A man comes out of the house and switches with the driver, but al Rahman doesn’t get out of the car.

  “I guess Racer X is driving now,” Steve says.

  The car pulls out of the driveway and returns to the highway. Finally, it turns onto a minor road and then pulls up to a farmhouse. A few outbuildings are scattered around the property.

  Al Rahman opens the passenger door and climbs out of the sedan. He walks inside the house, trailed by his driver.

  Somebody shouts, “They’re en route!” They needn’t have bothered. The helicopters buzz our hangar as they fly overhead toward the most important target of the Iraq War.

  This is our moment. We could change history, ending the reign of terror of one of the most prolific mass murderers of our time. I can’t even move. None of us can.

  The helicopters disappear into the distance. Their beating blades grow faint, then quiet.

  I hear somebody ask, “How long ’til they get there?”

  “I don’t know. That car drove a long way.”

  The surveillance asset stays focused on the house.

  “I wonder if Zarqawi’s in the house,” Cliff says.

  “He’s there,” I whisper to myself.

  Ten minutes pass. No sign of the helicopters. The ’gator pit’s mood changes from expectant to anxious. Are we going to miss him again?

  Suddenly, the screen grows dark. There’s a collective gasp in the pit. A towering column of smoke and debris erupts over the house. Everyone erupts in spontaneous applause.

  My God.

  Before the smoke can clear, another explosion tears through the remains of the house.

  Cliff runs to make a phone call. The feed ends. We all look around at each other. Is it over? Did we get him?

  Minutes drag by while we’re left in suspense. Finally, an officer walks into the pit.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him. Abu Musab al Zarqawi is dead.”

  Epilogue

  KILLING THE HYDRA

  FALL 2006

  THE OCEAN LOOKS sweet today, with perfect rollers that break fifty yards from shore. The sun-burnished beach stretches for miles in each direction. I am home, which for me is on my surfboard and where the waves are.

  This is my time. I’ve lived a nomadic, sometimes fierce existence in the service of my country. I have rarely had a place to call my own, so I return to these shores after every deployment to find solace. My mind clears, and I can make sense of all the things that have happened to me since my last visit.

  After my time in Iraq there is much I need to consider. I step into the froth at the edge of the waterline. A few splashes, and I’m waist deep in the balmy ocean. I study the way the waves are breaking. I’m alone on this beach. The weekend families, the bikini-clad women are hours from taking up space on the sand.

  I suppose everyone who returns from Iraq must carry their own personal demons. Mine have haunted me since the day Zarqawi died in our air strike.

  The strike team reached the house less than a dozen minutes after the bombs reduced it to smoking rubble. As the Special Forces jumped from the helicopters, two Iraqis emerged from the wreckage carrying a stretcher between the
m. Zarqawi lay on top of it, and when he saw American soldiers approaching, he tried to roll off the stretcher and get away, even as he coughed up blood. A soldier grabbed him and held him in place. As more blood poured from his mouth into the sand around him, his lungs collapsed. He looked up into his enemy’s eyes and died.

  The strike team brought his corpse to the compound along with al Rahman’s. Abu Haydar had pleaded with Mary and Tom to keep al Rahman, his closest friend, safe. He died in the blast, and they later told Abu Haydar. His reaction was the same as Abu Ali’s—total emotional collapse.

  I saw Zarqawi’s body later that day. He lay on the floor at my feet, looking remarkably intact. The bombs had collapsed his lungs, but he had no external injuries save a few cuts.

  Not long after that, the entire interrogations unit was called into the conference room for a briefing from a senior colonel and his deputy, a major. They were high-level intelligence officers for the command, but I’d only seen them a couple of times before, during VIP visits. The colonel addressed us with a backhanded compliment, “You all did great work here,” he told us, “even though this came down to just a few interrogators.” I wasn’t sure what he meant or who he meant, until I learned that Mary, Lenny, Tom, and Cliff were subsequently called into the commanding general’s office and awarded medals. Lenny, as the only military person, was given a Bronze Star. Finally, a lightbulb went on in my head. I finally knew who tied Randy’s hands and why Roger wouldn’t discipline Lenny. Most likely this colonel and major called those shots.

  The next day, as I walked past Mary in the ’gator pit, she called me over to her desk. “Does this girl look like al Masri?” she asked me.

  She held a photo of a dead child—a girl. Her crushed head lay amid the rubble of the house. I looked away, ashamed and horrified. Two children had died in the bombing. Nobody knew who they were.

  For me it doesn’t matter. I own a part of their deaths and I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life.

  The sun is low on the eastern horizon. The water ahead is glittering gold from its reflection. I step into deeper water. The smaller swells bulge across me on their way to the waterline. I slip onto my board and start to paddle.