Hard Measures

by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.

  Our first concern after capturing Abu Zubaydah was keeping him alive. It wasn’t easy. The single bullet that had penetrated his thigh when he was captured had hit bone and ricocheted around his body, causing multiple injuries so severe that initially people thought he had been hit by as many as three bullets. The CIA made arrangements for a world-class surgeon from Johns Hopkins Medical Center to be dispatched by private jet to Pakistan to make sure our prize prisoner survived. It was a near-run thing.

  AZ lapsed in and out of consciousness several times and only the combination of the surgeon’s skill and our good luck brought him through. There were several occasions when he nearly died.

  CIA officers and FBI agents remained at his side, both for his protection and to be alert in case AZ blurted out something useful in his delirium. As it became clear that AZ’s survival was probable, it became equally clear that we had to get him out of Pakistan. Too many people of questionable loyalty knew who he was and where he was being held.

  We immediately went to work to identify and establish a black site. We believed it critical to be able to conduct the interrogations in isolation, with neither the detainee nor the rest of the world knowing where he was. Working with a friendly country, we were able to quickly establish a facility that had the attributes we wanted. It was accessible but remote, defendable, and the comings and goings of Agency officers and their “guests” would not easily attract attention. We wanted to be able to hide in plain sight. To our potential hosts we promised three things: our gratitude, a sizable amount of money, and our assurances that we would do everything in our power to keep their support secret. We were eventually able to deliver only two out of the three.

  Shortly after we got an agreement from an allied country to host the black site, I flew out myself to check on its construction. Abu Zubaydah was already present in a hospital-like room where he was being carefully treated for his wounds. Nearby, a holding facility was under construction, which would allow us to interrogate him in complete isolation. We believed it important that Abu Zubaydah and the detainees who followed him not know where they were and took great efforts to ensure that was the case. We quickly were able to ready a holding facility for our guest that awaited only his recovery to good health for us to begin to use. The living conditions for our personnel who would operate the facility were spartan as well, but given the importance of the task at hand, I was confident that none of them would complain.

  The CIA had had for some time working on contract for it a civilian psychologist who had had extensive experience working with the U.S. military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) program.

  Within two days of AZ’s capture, we tracked down the contractor and asked if he would accompany a team of CTC officers to the black site where we hoped Abu Zubaydah would be interrogated. The contractor’s role was not to lead the interrogation but to advise our officers and on-scene FBI agents about any counterinterrogation techniques AZ might be employing to avoid providing critical data.

  In recent years, after the detention and interrogation of al-Qa’ida operatives has gotten considerable negative publicity, one former FBI special agent in particular has been aggressively telling stories about how he and his colleagues got all the good information out of AZ and how they could have gotten more but were thwarted by their brutish counterparts from the CIA. The truth is quite different.

  One of the myths about the CIA’s views on terrorist interrogation is that our position is that the bad guys say absolutely nothing when first captured and that after we literally twist their arms they suddenly tell everything they know. That is not how it worked.

  CIA officers and two FBI agents were with AZ constantly while he drifted in and out of consciousness. Not knowing if he would live or die, they tried to ask him questions during periods of lucidity.

  After overcoming the shock of being captured, most detainees talked a little. Some talked a lot. Most tried to feed their captors information that they thought would give the impression they were cooperating but would result in no significant intelligence gain. Often they underestimated us. Such was the case with AZ in the early stages of his detention.

  At one point he said to the senior CIA officer present and another FBI agent that he had “just remembered” something he wanted to tell them about “dirty bombs” but that he was exhausted and needed eight hours of sleep. They consulted with our contractor, who suggested that they let AZ sleep for four hours, then wake him and tell him he had been asleep for eight. If he indeed had information about dirty bombs, they didn’t want to waste any time finding out about it.

  When AZ awoke he provided a very vague description of two colleagues who he said were planning on conducting a terrorist operation in the United States. One he called “Abu al-Amerikani.” The information he was sharing was very sketchy, and Abu Zubaydah undoubtedly believed that it was so imprecise that we would never be able to locate the person he was talking about. Fortunately, due to some exceptional intelligence work by CIA officers in Pakistan, which allowed us to identify that person (a U.S. citizen by the name of Jose Padilla), we were able to locate him overseas and have him tracked until he reached Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where he was arrested. While successfully conducting a dirty bomb attack turned out to be beyond Padilla’s capabilities, he definitely had the desire and intent to conduct some sort of mass-casualty attack on the United States and was thwarted only by good luck and good intelligence work.

  While we were delighted to have this early success, we were confident that Abu Zubaydah knew much, much more, and we could not count on similar slips by him to give us what we needed to know in any timely manner.

  In the early days of AZ’s detention, there were essentially three different types of interrogation being conducted simultaneously. The two FBI agents employed their standard methods, generally designed to get people to confess to crimes so that they can be prosecuted. They called this “informed interrogation” and used all the standard techniques, such as “good cop–bad cop,” attempts at rapport building, and pretending that they knew more than they did. Also present was a senior officer from the CIA’s office of security who had conducted countless investigations himself and tended to prefer a law enforcement nine-step technique known as the Reid Method. Finally, there was a senior CIA operations officer who had vast experience in foreign intelligence and whose standard procedures were designed to elicit intelligence, not convictions. All three techniques have their virtues and successes. All of the participants worked as a team and were advised by our contractor.

  For the most part the CIA officers and FBI agents present got along well and worked together collegially. Where there were differences, they were largely ones of divergent perspectives developed over years of experience in one culture or another. The FBI’s mind-set is generally to gather information in such a way that it can be used to prove a crime in a trial. CIA officers’ focus is on gathering intelligence to prevent future acts of terrorism. To some extent, for a handful of participants, the debate over primacy of interrogation techniques became a turf battle. And when the FBI didn’t win that debate, some of its adherents never got over the fact.

  Despite the current claims by former FBI agents that they had bonded with AZ and were able to charm information out of him, the facts are quite different. One of the FBI agents mistakenly revealed to AZ that we had his lengthy personal diary and were mining it for information. That cost us the benefit of surprise, which had allowed us to stun our detainee with things we knew about his past. That diary also proved to be the source of more controversy. Some in the FBI later told gullible journalists that it demonstrated that Abu Zubaydah was crazy. In fact, our analysis showed that he used a number of clever literary devices in expressing himself, but if anything, he was crazy like a fox.

  Critics have said that AZ was not nearly as significant a player as we portrayed him as being. The truth, however, is that he was perfectly placed to answer the questions we had. As an al-Qa�
��ida facilitator, he knew all the major players in the organization. He knew where they came from, where they went, who they worked with, what they looked like, and how they were motivated. If you could have picked one person associated with al-Qa’ida at the time to interrogate, other than bin Ladin and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, themselves, it would have been Abu Zubaydah. Not only was he on our radar for plots against the United States, but he was also believed to have been behind a plot that was narrowly thwarted in Amman, Jordan, in December 1999, which involved huge amounts of explosives that could have killed thousands. As a Palestinian, AZ wanted to strike out against Jordan for “selling out” to Israel. Critics mistakenly assume that you have to nab the top person in a terrorist organization to stop a plot. The truth is that one of the best ways to disrupt terrorists is to know something about the group’s organizational plumbing so that you can identify the critical nodes that, if attacked, will derail planning and plot preparations. This was the kind of knowledge that AZ had to a greater degree than almost anyone else at this point in al-Qa’ida’s evolution.

  AZ told CIA interrogators that he respected all of our team, especially the female chief of base (whom he called “the Emira,” Arabic for “princess” or “leader”) of the black site. He respected them all, he said, except for a Muslim FBI agent, who had offended him early on. The agent, it turned out, had tried to debate Islamic theory with AZ, who thought the agent had insufficient grounding in the facts.

  At one point the Bureau guys decided to try to “recruit” AZ. In a meeting with the terrorist, the Arab-American agent told AZ, “Don’t pay attention to those CIA people … you work with me,” and he gave him a candy bar. AZ was offended that the agent would think that he could be bought for a Snickers bar. The FBI man tried to use his Arab heritage as an opening to get AZ to talk, but it turned out to be counterproductive. “You are the worst kind of Arab,” AZ told him, “you are a traitor!” “Look,” the FBI agent told him, “America knows who its friends and who its enemies are. Work with us and we can make you a wealthy man.” AZ responded, “What makes you think I would turn my back on Allah for money?”

  Another red herring that is sometimes thrown out is that technically, AZ was not a full-fledged member of al-Qa’ida. He had never sworn bayat, or allegiance, to bin Ladin. This is a meaningless distinction. Many senior operatives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, for various reasons did not become card-carrying members of UBL’s organization, but there were no more important participants in its deadly deeds.

  One FBI agent told CIA officers before going into an interrogation session that he planned to “go Sipowicz on Abu Zubaydah.” Our officer didn’t catch the cultural reference, but the agent was referring to Andy Sipowicz, a character in the 1980s TV show NYPD Blue. Sipowicz, as played by Dennis Franz, was a hot-tempered, alcoholic bully who broke the rules but got results. True to his word, the FBI man entered AZ’s holding cell and started screaming at him, calling him a “motherf***er” and a “son of a bitch.” Abu Zubaydah, who speaks decent English, apparently mentally translated the slurs literally and later said that the G-man was calling his mother “a dog.” That is not a recommended technique for bonding with Arab men, who view dogs as particularly unclean and loathsome animals.

  Another FBI special agent tried the opposite approach, telling AZ that if he cooperated we would make sure his mother was well taken care of. “Stay away from my mother,” he said, “if she thought I was cooperating with you she would be ashamed of me.” The conversation illustrated one of the many differences between the typical criminal and a terrorist. Drug runners, for example, are not involved with narcotics for philosophical reasons—they are in it for the money. Terrorists are ideological revolutionaries. Their commitment to their cause is far more deeply rooted, and it takes a far different approach to get them to intentionally share valuable information.

  The ham-handed approach of the FBI officers led to AZ’s shutting down communication completely. The FBI agents appeared to realize the damage done and went back into his cell to try to restore relations. One of them even got down on the floor, held his hand, and apologized. AZ was not buying it. CIA officers watching on closed-circuit video saw Abu Zubaydah grab his own crotch, in a gesture more typical of American gangs than Islamic terrorists, and say, “You guys might as well go home because I am done with you.”

  CIA expert analysts, including Jennifer Matthews, were convinced that AZ had a ton of useful information in his head that could save American and allied lives. So the CIA team started to employ some techniques designed to get AZ to reconsider his decision to clam up. These techniques, such as limited sleep deprivation, isolation, bombarding his cell with noise, and the like, did not require special approval but went beyond something that a typical detainee in a U.S. prison might experience.

  These actions seemed to upset at least one of our FBI colleagues, who made a play to take control of the interrogation. He got very confrontational and seemed to blame our contractor for everything. At the time the contractor was still just an advisor. He was not in charge of the interrogation and hadn’t even received all the security clearances to allow him to read the most highly classified cable traffic flowing to and from the black site.

  At one point, after being rebuffed at an interrogation attempt with AZ, the FBI agent threatened violence, not against Abu Zubaydah but against the contractor. He eventually calmed down and apologized, blaming his outburst on being “hot-blooded.” He didn’t stay calm for long, however, and eventually departed the black site, saying he did not want to be part of such procedures.

  The FBI had talked about bringing in a “clean team”—a group of agents who were not privy to whatever AZ had previously said while he was in detention, nor would they know anything about how he had been treated. They hoped that he would repeat some of the things he had previously told us so that it would be useful in an eventual court case. But those of us in the CIA weren’t focused on punishing him for the last atrocity; we wanted to stop the next one.

  It was clear to us that we had to do something to get the information flowing from AZ again. In June I asked several senior members of our AZ interrogation team, including the contractor, to come back to CIA HQ and meet with me. I listened to their descriptions of the successes and failures during the first two months of Abu Zubaydah’s confinement and was convinced that we could not sit around forever and wait for AZ to have a change of heart, forget the insults of the FBI, and decide he wanted to trade his principles for a candy bar. We were under the constant threat of new and even more deadly attacks and time was of the essence.

  Still, there were no guarantees. I asked the contractor how long it would take, if we employed more aggressive, but legal, techniques, before he would know whether a detainee was willing to cooperate or was so dedicated that he would take any secrets he had with him to the grave. “Thirty days” was his estimate. I thought about it overnight and the next morning asked the contractor if he would be willing to take charge of creating and implementing such a program. He said he would be willing to undertake the assignment but could not do it by himself. It was clear to me at that point that including the FBI in the interrogation, given their “prosecution at all cost” mentality, was not the way to go. I agreed that the contractor should bring in someone from the outside to help him work with Agency officers in crafting a program that we hoped would save lives.

  The result was, beyond a doubt, the most effective and carefully managed program I was involved with in my thirty-one years at the CIA. But I also say that without doubt it remains the most maligned, misunderstood, and mischaracterized mission in the Agency’s mystery-clouded history.

  Here is how it began. The normal kinds of interrogation used by law enforcement, in our view, were not appropriate. Standard methods of police interrogation work well when trying to build a case for prosecution and when dealing with criminals who are motivated by a desire to minimize potential prison sentences or to expi
ate a sense of guilt. The people we were hoping to interrogate had no such expectations or feelings. Additionally, the more traditional “Reid technique” of interrogation broadly used by law enforcement agencies in the United States can work well when you have all the time in the world to employ it. We didn’t have that luxury. We feared and anticipated a second wave of devastating attacks on the United States. You couldn’t see a time bomb, but we could not miss the sound of one ticking.

  We had two priorities. Any interrogation program we developed had to be effective and legal. Assuring ourselves of the latter proved time-consuming. But as critically important as we felt it to be to get information that might help us thwart impending attacks, I insisted that we take no action unless and until we were assured, in writing, by the seniormost legal authorities, that we were not crossing legal red lines. Some of my most senior leaders in CTC argued that we couldn’t afford to wait for approval from policymakers. They felt the pressure of a possible second wave of attacks that might happen at any moment and knew that Abu Zubaydah had in his head information that could help us thwart them. But I said, no, we will not go ahead until we know we have the backing of our political leaders and a binding legal opinion from the Department of Justice.

  In meeting after meeting at the White House, George Tenet insisted that there be buy-in both from the political leadership and from the top authorities at DOJ. He ensured that we kept the senior leadership of our congressional oversight committees informed as well. The pressure that we all felt from the administration and Congress was palpable. Perhaps even more so than we were, they were worried about an imminent next strike and wanted us to get critical information from the detainees to prevent it. But George insisted at one of our meetings: “We have to get this right or we will rue the day.”