500 Days
Page 1
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Contents
Introduction
The Characters
Prologue
Book One: A War of Unknown Warriors
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Book Two: The Dismal Shade
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Book Three: The Threat
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes and Sources
Index
To Frank Jordan
Teacher, mentor, friend and role model to untold numbers of boys and men, including me.
The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and the establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always be one of uncertainty, confusion, error and wild and fierce fanaticism.
—JOHN C. CALHOUN,
A Disquisition on Government
INTRODUCTION
This is not the book I set out to write. Originally, I had planned to chronicle the Bush administration’s response to terrorism from the day of the September 11 attacks through the end of the president’s second term in January 2009. The deeper I dug, though, the more I came to realize that my original strategy was off base. Instead, I concluded that every aspect of the terror wars flowed from judgments made in little more than five hundred days after 9/11—554 to be exact. Everything—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, detainee treatment, CIA tactics, and more—could be traced to those eighteen months. What followed in the nearly six years afterward was little more than reactions to those early decisions.
Equally important, I found that the strategy cobbled together in those initial days was not the creation of a single group of politicians or even of a single government. The Bush administration was important, but America did not hold a monopoly on shaping the multipronged assault on terrorists.
So, I changed directions. By concentrating my research on the rush of events over those 554 days, I would be able to lay bare the essence of a trauma that haunts the world to this day. I later decided that the full story could not be understood simply from a depiction of events in the corridors of power; this history was also shaped by the experiences of the powerless. Extraordinary rendition was not simply a policy adopted in government conference rooms—it played out in real ways on real people’s lives, as did decisions about the application of the Geneva Conventions, the use of secret prisons, and the like. These experiences, sometimes horrendous, helped shape directions of international policies in profound and often unseen ways. I would be remiss in ignoring those individual consequences.
As with most histories, this endeavor entailed covering some now-familiar paths, although I was surprised by how often the accepted version of events proved to be inaccurate. A trove of additional evidence—derived from years of conducting interviews, reviewing documents, and listening to secret recordings—exposed a vast array of previously unknown details that make the narrative of this era clearer and, in some cases, more shocking. Woven together, I believe these elements of the story—the known and unknown, the domestic and the international, the great and the small—reveal the heart of an epochal upheaval that historians will continue to examine for decades to come.
Readers looking in these pages for my view of these events will no doubt be disappointed. I have little faith in opinion, even my own. Instead, this book is meant to be a dispassionate history of this crucial time. And I have found there is little in these tales that is black-and-white. While there have no doubt been horrible decisions, there are few villains; the Bush administration and its allies did not want to impose a police state and its critics did not want to coddle terrorists. Few on either side acted with disregard to the concerns of the other; instead, each wrestled with finding the proper balance, as they saw it. I leave it to the readers to decide who, if anyone, was right.
KURT EICHENWALD
(June, 2012)
THE CHARACTERS
The White House
George W. Bush
President of the United States
Dick Cheney
Vice President
On the White House Staff
Andy Card
Chief of Staff
Josh Bolten Deputy
Chief of Staff
Karl Rove
Advisor
Richard Clarke
Special Advisor on Cybersecurity
Stuart Bowen
Deputy Staff Secretary
In the National Security Council
Condoleezza Rice
National Security Advisor
Stephen Hadley
Deputy National Security Advisor
John Bellinger III
Senior Associate Counsel
In the White House Counsel’s Office
Alberto Gonzales
White House Counsel
Tim Flanigan
Deputy Counsel
Bradford Berenson
Associate Counsel
In the Office of the Vice President
David Addington
Senior Counsel
The Central Intelligence Agency
George Tenet
Director
John McLaughlin
Acting Deputy Director
John Rizzo
Acting General Counsel
In the Counterterrorist Center
Cofer Black
Director
Ben Bonk
Deputy Director
Hank Crumpton
Special Operations
Station Chief
Robert Lady, Milan
Field Officers
Gary Schroen
Gary Berntsen
Johnny Michael Spann
Dave Tyson
Jeffrey Castelli
John Kiriakou
Deuce Martinez
Consultants
James Mitchell
Retired SERE psychologist
Bruce Jessen
Retired SERE psychologist
The Pentagon
Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary
William “Jim” Haynes
General Counsel
Whit Cobb
Deputy General Counsel
Richard Shiffrin
Deputy General Counsel, Intelligence
Alberto Mora
General Counsel, U.S. Navy
Douglas Feith
Undersecretary for Policy
Steve Cambone
Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Policy
United States Central Command
Tommy Franks
Commander
With the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Richard Myers
Chairman (from October 1, 2001)
Hugh Shelton
Chairman (until October 1, 2001)
Peter Pace
Vice Chairman
Jane Dalton
Legal Advisor
With the Naval Criminal Investigative Service
David Brant
Director
Michael Gelles
; Chief Psychologist
With Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Program
Lt. Col. Morgan Banks
Chief Psychologist
Joseph Witsch
Instructor
At USAMIIRD
Bruce Ivins
Anthrax Specialist
John Ezzell
Anthrax Specialist
At Guantanamo Bay
Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey
Commander
Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert
Commander
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller
Commander
Lt. Col. Diane Beaver
Legal Advisor
Maj. John Leso
Psychologist
Col. Larry James
Psychologist
Britt Mallow
Commander, Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF)
Mark Fallon
Director, CITF
Blaine Thomas
Assistant Special Agent in Charge, CITF
The Department of Justice
John Ashcroft
Attorney General
Larry Thompson
Deputy Attorney General
Theodore Olson
Solicitor General
Paul Clement
Deputy Solicitor General
Gregory Garre
Assistant Solicitor General
In the Criminal Division
Michael Chertoff
Director
In the Office of Legal Counsel
Jay Bybee
Assistant Attorney General
John Yoo
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Patrick Philbin
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
John Delahunty
Special Counsel
With the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Bob Mueller
Director
Tom Pickard
Acting Director
Dale Watson
Assistant Director
Pasquale D’Amuro
Assistant Director
Ali Soufan
Special Agent
Harry Samit
Special Agent
Russell Fincher
Special Agent
Craig Donnachie
Special Agent
Robert Fuller
Special Agent
Greg Jones
Supervisory Special Agent
Michael Maltbie
Supervisory Special Agent
With the Immigration and Naturalization Service
James Ziglar
Commissioner
José Meléndez-Pérez
Customs Inspector
John Weess
Special Agent
Department of Transportation
Norm Mineta
Secretary
With the Federal Aviation Administration
Monte Belger
Acting Deputy Administrator
Dave Canoles
Manager, Air Traffic Evaluations and Investigations
Ben Sliney
Manager, National Operations
Department of State
Colin Powell
Secretary
Richard Armitage
Deputy Secretary
William Taft IV
General Counsel
Pierre-Richard Prosper
Ambassador-at-Large
Christopher Hoh
Deputy Ambassador Sarajevo
Gary Edson
Deputy Assistant
The National Security Agency
Michael Hayden
Director
The Centers for Disease Control
Sherif Zaki
Chief, Infectious Disease Pathology
The United States Senate
Joe Biden
Delaware Democrat
Robert Byrd
West Virginia Democrat
Tom Daschle
South Dakota Democrat
Patrick Leahy
Vermont Democrat
Joseph Lieberman
Connecticut Democrat
Ted Kennedy
Massachusetts Democrat
Don Nickles
Nevada Republican
Harry Reid
Nevada Democrat
Arlen Specter
Pennsylvania Republican
Federal Courts
Robert Doumar
District Judge
T. S. Ellis 3d
District Judge
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
District Judge
Michael Mukasey
District Judge
J. Harvis Wilkinson 3d
Appellate Judge
Tommy Miller
Magistrate Judge
In Great Britain
Tony Blair
Prime Minister
Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary
David Manning
Foreign Policy Advisor
Geoff Hoon
Defense Secretary
Alastair Campbell
Director of Communications
Jonathan Powell
Chief of Staff
Christopher Meyer
Ambassador to the United States
Lt. Gen. Anthony Pigott
Coordinator, Afghanistan campaign
The Tipton Three
Shafiq Rasul
Ruhal Ahmed
Asif Iqbal
In Canada
Bill Graham
Foreign Minister
Ahmad El-Maati
Terrorist suspect (exonerated)
Abdullah Almalki
Terrorist suspect (exonerated)
Maher Arar
Terrorist suspect (exonerated)
Monia Mazigh
Arar’s wife
Patrick Callaghan
Staff Sargeant, Mounties
Randy Buffam
Corporal, Mounties
Rick Flewelling
Corporal, Mounties
Alexander Gelvan
CSIS agent
Theresa Sullivan
CSIS agent
In Bosnia
Alija Behmen
Prime Minister
Muhamed Bešić
Interior Minister
Belkacem Bensayah
Terrorist suspect (exonerated)
Anela Kobilica
Bensayah’s wife
Lakhdar Boumediene
Terrorist suspect (exonerated)
In Italy
Silvio Berlusconi
Prime Minister
Gianfranco Battelli
Director, SISMI
Nicolò Pollari
Director, SISMI
Gustavo Pignero
Director of Counter-Espionage, SISMI
Stefano D’Ambrosio
SISMI officer
Luciano Pironi
Carabinieri officer
Abu Omar
Terrorist suspect, uncharged
In Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai
Chair, Transitional Administration
With the American Military
John Bolduc
Master Sergeant
Mark Nutsch
Captain, Special Forces
Henry Smith
Army Major
With the Northern Alliance
Ahmad Shah Massoud
Rashid Dostum
Masood Khalili
Muhammed Aref Sawari
With the Taliban
John Walker Lindh
Yaser Esam Hamdi
In France
Jacques Chirac
President
In Russia
Vladmir Putin
President
In Germany
Gerhard Schröder
Chancellor
In Syria
George Salloum
Head of Interrogations
In Libya
&n
bsp; Moussa Koussa
Former Deputy Director of Intelligence
In Australia
John Howard
Prime Minister
In Indonesia
General I Made Mangku Pastika
Commissioner, General Police