Unjustifiable Means
Page 20
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Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Joanne, and family, who to this day know little about so much that I was involved in. Joanne’s father and my father were partners on the Harrison, New Jersey, Police Department Detective Bureau. I joined their law enforcement ranks in 1979 when I stood in the US District Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, as the chief deputy US marshal administered my first oath of office: “I pledge to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”
To me, those were more than just words. It was a conscious decision on my part that I might have to lay down my life for my country; and in fact I have given much of my life to my country. The pieces that were left went to Joanne, Matt, and Megan. They missed out on much of my life, just as I missed out on so much of theirs. When you are gone for extended periods, working undercover, when you run out in the middle of the night to respond to a call, when you have to worry every time the phone rings in the middle of the night or when someone knocks at the door, dreading that it might be that notification that any law enforcement officer’s spouse dreads, life is not entirely normal, on either side of the family equation.
My wife recently heard me on the phone recounting some of the issues in this book and said: “Who are you? I don’t really know you!” A revealing comment from the woman who has been married to me for more than thirty-five years.
My world was filled with murderers, rapists, child abusers, and terrorists, the worst in society. I tried never to bring the job home and expose my family to those things that had become routine to me, so I compartmentalized my work life from my home life, and my job was the priority. There was a point in my career when that changed, and my wife remembers the call when I said, “Enough is enough. From now on the family will come first,” but a lot of water had flowed under the bridge before I got to that point.
Much of what I wrote in this book my family will be learning about for the first time. I hope it gives them some comfort to read about what I intentionally hid from them for so many years. Britt Mallow would tell everyone on the CITF that their grandchildren would ask what they did during the war on terror. I want my precious granddaughter, Candace Jade, who was born into a world of incredible advantages and disadvantages, to know I did my job.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photograph by The Darkroom Photography
MARK FALLON is an international security consultant and a career national security professional. He spent more than thirty years in government, two as a deputy US marshal, twenty-seven with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and two as a member of the Senior Executive Service within the Department of Homeland Security. Fallon has spoken publicly and written extensively on the subjects of combating terrorism, detainee treatment, and interrogation procedures.
GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS
BSCT Behavioral Science Consultation Team, pronounced “biscuit,” an integrated approach to interrogations.
CENTCOM Central Command. Based at MacDill AFB in Tampa, CENTCOM has military responsibility for a broad swath of the Middle East and Muslim world, generally.
CIA Central Intelligence Agency.
CID Army Criminal Investigation Command.
CITF Criminal Investigation Task Force, the group I led at Gitmo. Our assignment was to produce RTBs (reasons to believe) for the president and to assemble evidence in preparing detainees for trial before a military tribunal. We also were responsible for assessing the potential risks associated with the transfer or release of detainees from Gitmo.
CJTF Combined Joint Task Force.
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency.
DITMAC Department of Defense Insider Threat Management and Analysis Center.
DOD Department of Defense.
DOJ Department of Justice.
DOS Department of State.
EIT Enhanced interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation, waterboarding, etc.
EO Executive Order, issued by the president.
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FM 34-52 Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation
GTMO US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, pronounced “Gitmo.”
GWOT Global War on Terror.
HIG High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
HUMINT Human Intelligence.
ISG Iraq Survey Group.
JAGC Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff.
JPRA Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.
JTF Joint task force. Two JTFs play a central role in this book: JTF-160, which was responsible for detention facilities at GTMO, and JTF-170, which was handed primary responsibility for interrogations. JTF-GTMO was established to combine the functions of JTF-160 and JTF-170.
KSM Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
LEA Law enforcement agency.
NCIS Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the group from which I was detailed to CTIF. NCIS serves as the Department of the Navy’s FBI and CIA.
NSA National Security Agency.
OGA Other Government Agency, the required way of referring to the CIA in all matters involving detainees.
OGC Office of General Counsel.
OLC Office of Legal Counsel.
OSI Office of Special Investigations.
RDI Rendition, Detention and Interrogation, the broad name for the CIA’s prisoner- and intel-gathering operation. Maintained “black sites” in multiple foreign locations.
RTB Reason to Believe, the legal requirement imposed on the president to move detainees to military trial. Our job was to provide the president with RTB evidence.
SASC Senate Armed Services Committee.
SCIF Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility; spaces immune from electronic snooping and other unauthorized disclosures.
SERE Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape. Originally developed to train military personnel at risk of being captured by the enemy, the program was later applied to enhanced interrogation techniques patterned after those American POWs had faced in previous wars—hence, SERE-EITs.
SIGINT Signals Intelligence.
SMU Special Missions Unit.
SOCOM Special Operations Command.
SOLIC Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict.
SOUTHCOM Southern Command, also based at MacDill AFB, oversees military special-operations forces. SOUTHCOM includes Navy SEALS, Army Green Berets, and other forward-operating and covert units.
SSCI Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
UCMJ Uniform Code of Military Justice.
New York, NY
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Fallon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
First Regan Arts hardcover edition, October 2017
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939709
ISBN 978-1-942872-79-5
ISBN 978-1-942872-80-1 (eBook)
Interior design by Nancy Singer
Cover design by Mike McQuade
Jacket design/illustration by Mike McQuade
Based on original photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images