It was, instead, a booklet written by at least two men a decade before, at a time when al-Qaeda was in tatters and bin Laden was living at home in Saudi Arabia. It espoused different goals, using different means, from al-Qaeda’s. While it did contain instructions on how to commit terrorist acts, much of that information was amateurish, particularly in the areas of training and weapons usage.
The manual—which does not mention al-Qaeda or bin Laden, or say anything negative about the United States or any Western country—is instead focused on methods for overthrowing a Middle Eastern government. Its contents deal with the specifics of that government’s modus operandi—identifying the agency that arrests suspects, summarizing the training of its officers and prosecutors, and even describing the different rooms where detainees are held. The details match only one country: Egypt.
The “resistance techniques” laid out in the document were almost laughingly naive. The manual described some of the most gruesome forms of torture being practiced in parts of the Middle East, including tearing out fingernails, burning skin with lit cigarettes and fire, beating victims with sticks and electric wire, and shocking their genitals with electrical current. And how were the terrorist trainees to fortify themselves against such torments? The manual advised memorizing prepared answers for questions, disobeying orders, taking heart in the likelihood that the torture would likely end more quickly if none of the questions were answered, and praying to Allah. At no point did it suggest that someone who is arrested should fabricate torture claims, as both American and British officials would later contend.
Once Mitchell and his colleague Bruce Jessen finished their review of the al-Qaeda training manuals, they wrote a paper infused with psychological jargon analyzing the terrorist group’s thinking and recommending that the Americans adopt the tactics used in SERE—including slaps, sleep deprivation, walling, and waterboarding—to wring information out of captured terrorists.
Mitchell assured CIA officials that the methods would strike fear into the hearts of terrorists comparable to that experienced by pilots of a plane about to smash into a building. The officials liked what they heard—tough, muscular techniques coated in the dispassionate lexicon of science.
But the recommendation by Mitchell and Jessen was counterintuitive—if the “resistance techniques” in the manual were intended to help a terrorist avoid confessing when being burned by fire, why would less abusive tactics, like waterboarding, succeed?
All of those flaws and questions escaped the attention of the two men and the American government as they hastened to develop a program for harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists. None of them realized that this aggressive—and unprecedented—American policy was being formulated by these unqualified psychologists based in part on an obscure, near-meaningless, and wildly misinterpreted document.
• • •
Paul Wolfowitz liked Alcatraz. That, he argued, would be a good place to hold and interrogate al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
A group of Pentagon officials had gathered in Rumsfeld’s office to debate possible choices for detention centers. It was a Sunday afternoon, after Rumsfeld had just returned from church, a time when the group had agreed to once again kick around ideas.
The debate had been set off by Tommy Franks, who told Rumsfeld that he wanted the detainees out of his hair. So, it was left to the defense secretary and his team to decide where to put them.
“I think Alcatraz is a great choice,” Wolfowitz said. “In American eyes, it’s the symbol of where you put the worst of the worst.”
It wouldn’t work, Haynes replied. “It’s in a metropolitan area,” he said. “It would take months to refurbish, and it’s not DOD property.”
There were also legal questions to consider. There was sure to be litigation, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a case from Alcatraz would be heard, was the most liberal in the country.
Then perhaps, Wolfowitz said, the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific. That would have a good climate, which would help limit illness among detainees.
There were other possibilities. Colin Powell had been beating the bushes for ideas, calling allies to see which might be willing to provide a location for the prison. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, judged each new suggestion based on five factors—security, safety, logistical support, cost, and applicable law. The best options, the group concluded, would place the detainees out of the reach of American courts.
The list of options rapidly grew. Powell persuaded both Panama and Granada to help. South Korea, Diego Garcia, and Wake Island were other available choices. Then there was the possibility of loading detainees onto ships at sea.
But one alternative kept rising to the top. It was an American base on an island governed by military law. It was relatively close. The climate was warm. And the captured terrorists could not possibly escape.
After the analysis was wrapped up, the officials agreed: Detainees should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
• • •
Bush took his seat at the head of the table in the White House Situation Room, surrounded by the full war council and their staffs. Condoleezza Rice sat directly across from him.
“Mr. President, Don has been through this and recommends that we put the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” she said. “And we support that.”
Cheney spoke up. “Where do they come from, and how do you get them there?”
A chart was brought out listing those issues, and others. At the bottom of the chart for each topic were small diamonds.
“What’s that symbol?” Cheney asked.
“Each diamond is a decision point,” Rice said.
There was the question of what to do with captured Americans; Lindh was already in custody, being held on a naval vessel. The consensus was that citizens should be brought back into the United States, tried in civilian court, and—if convicted—sent to prison.
“What if a detainee is dangerous, but we can’t try them?” Bush asked.
One of the lawyers took that question. “If they are enemy combatants in a conflict, the rules of war allow us to hold them as long as the conflict continues.”
Bush and Cheney asked a few more questions. Then the president decided to accept his advisors’ recommendation.
• • •
Guantanamo Bay, on the southeastern end of Cuba, was dubbed “Puerto Grande” by Columbus when he landed there in 1494. In the centuries since, the harbor emerged as a trophy sought by numerous combatants eager to take possession of its strategic location and natural beauty.
In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War in 1898, when American naval ships rode out a hurricane in Guantanamo Bay, Washington saw the harbor as a prize of great value. America had seized Cuba from Spain and, in 1903, worked out a deal with its newly installed government allowing the United States to lease Guantanamo Bay in perpetuity under an agreement that granted complete jurisdiction of the area. The military built a naval base there, covering forty-five miles of land and water.
By 2001, the Guantanamo naval station was America’s oldest, and the site of constant renovation. By December, the lead construction superintendent at the base had been working there for a year and a half. Late that month, he was overseeing a crew handling a project on the leeward side of the base when his department manager issued new instructions.
“I need you to close down your project,” the manager said. “We’re going to be starting a project to renovate and build another area.”
They were under orders to construct a detention center, the manager said, one that would hold some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. And this would be a rush job—they needed to have something ready by January 31, just over a month away. Neither man could have known the deadline would soon be moved up by a couple of weeks.
There were already about forty cells, remnants from the early 1990s, when the naval station was used to house Cuban and Haitian refugees. There was plenty of space for expansion, but Wa
shington hadn’t spent enough time planning for the larger facility; no new supplies were available—no wood, no fencing, no concrete. The detention center for suspected terrorists would have to be built from scraps.
The supervisor ordered his crews to wander the island, gathering materials. They removed old chain-link fences, posts, whatever they could find. With that, they constructed frames for the cells. Showers were built using some of the same materials, with fencing on the sides and the top. There was nowhere to cover up; whenever detainees showered, they would be visible to everyone, including female soldiers. There would be no hot water.
The workers would eventually have to build a real detention facility, but for now, this jerry-rigged version, soon to be dubbed Camp X-Ray, would have to do.
* * *
2 It has been frequently reported that this journey ended on November 11, but that is incorrect. Several al-Qaeda members who took part in the trip, as well as classified government records, reveal that the date is December 14. See Notes and Sources.
3 Even a casual reading of the Manchester Manual makes it clear that this document was written not for al-Qaeda, but for another group entirely. Two members of a Middle Eastern intelligence service confirmed that analysis, with one calling the idea that the manual was intended for al-Qaeda “absurd.” See Notes and Sources.
BOOK TWO
THE DISMAL SHADE
7
A group of Afghani musicians played in darkness near a C-130 turboprop at Bagram Airfield. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, stepped off the aircraft and walked briskly down a red carpet toward a fit, bearded man wearing a long cape and karakul hat. Blair smiled as he shook hands with the man, Hamid Karzai, the newly installed chairman of the Afghan Transitional Administration.
Karzai was a Pashtun leader who had been forced into exile after emerging as a fierce opponent of the Taliban. The American air campaign in October gave Karzai a chance to return to his homeland and take up arms against Taliban rule. Days after the bombing began, he and three colleagues rode motorcycles to the Pakistani border and crossed into Afghanistan. They traveled to Kandahar, where Karzai spent a few weeks taking the pulse of residents, trying to judge if they had tired of the Taliban’s stranglehold on their lives. Quietly, the Afghanis poured out their feelings of bitterness and fear of the regime; the population, Karzai decided, was ready for political change.
To take charge of that mission, Karzai needed supplies, and lots of them. Using his ever-present iridium satellite phone, he contacted American embassies in Rome and Islamabad dozens of times, seeking materials and weaponry so that he and his growing militia could join the campaign against the Taliban. Aid flooded in, and the Americans quickly recognized him as a charismatic and knowledgeable leader who was able to rally people to his side. When the Taliban collapsed, prominent Afghanis gathered in Bonn to form the Transitional Administration. With American support, they named Karzai as chairman of the governing committee.
When Blair arrived in Bagram on January 7, 2002, he was the first Western head of state to visit Afghanistan’s new leader. Out of deference to the danger of this gathering, the arrival ceremony was brief; a group of soldiers from British Special Forces quickly whisked the official party to a line of armored, four-wheel-drive vehicles.
As the caravan made its way slowly over endless tank traps, Karzai spoke confidently about the future of Afghanistan—perhaps a bit too confidently, Blair thought. Finally, the group reached a Russian barracks where Blair was scheduled to sit down with eight other ministers.
They gathered in a large meeting area inside the building. A collection of tables and chairs had been positioned around the room. A drab spread of sweets had been laid out and would remain uneaten.
Karzai opened the discussions but seemed to have little control over his government’s bickering factions. Even as he attempted to express graceful thanks to Blair, other ministers interrupted, openly aggressive and belligerent.
One of the first to speak was a rotund man who bore a striking resemblance to Orson Welles. For several minutes, he thundered about the challenges facing Afghanistan with its crippling poverty and war-weary citizenry.
“We need help,” he said in a derisive tone, suggesting that he doubted Britain would deliver.
“We understand the difficulties faced by your country,” Blair said. “And I want to assure you that Britain will stay with you for the long term.”
Even with all of its problems, Karzai said, his country’s future was brighter. “Afghanistan is well rid of the terrible leadership that came before,” he said. “The Taliban almost destroyed this country, but its people are now prepared to do what is necessary to rebuild.”
The hopeful words did nothing to quiet the tone of distrust and anger in the room; Karzai felt embarrassed about how his compatriots were treating the prime minister. Later, as the meeting drew to a close, he spoke again, trying to rekindle an air of optimism and gratitude.
He faced Blair. “We are all so glad that such a distinguished person as yourself has come to see us, taken the risk,” Karzai said with a smile. “You have demonstrated such goodwill. When the Afghan people hear that you visited us, they will be proud and thrilled.”
The gathering broke up with a few remaining grumbles. On one side of the room, a Special Forces member leaned toward Alastair Campbell, a senior Blair aide.
“Welcome to bandit country,” the soldier whispered.
• • •
The classified threat matrix was delivered by hand and electronically to senior administration officials and to national security outposts around the world. And almost daily, at least one item on this list of potential dangers terrified official Washington.
Since the days after 9/11, the White House had demanded that all information about potential threats be transmitted around the government through the matrix; then intelligence or law enforcement officials were assigned to investigate each item. The data came with almost no filtering; it was, instead, raw intelligence, the kind not usually provided to policy makers. Such information was too easy to misinterpret—the unschooled in the art of spy craft would likely give great weight to insignificant or unreliable reports.
Now every bit of material—from the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense Human Intelligence Operations—was dumped into the matrix. Intelligence was no longer served by the glass, but shot from the fire hose.
Over time, those reviewing the daily list of potential threats found that the experience could be overwhelming—and then numbing. And far too many listed items were absurd on their face.
An official from a CIA office in the Middle East reported that al-Qaeda was preparing to launch a kamikaze-style air assault on an American naval base at a South Pacific island; the navy never had a base on that island, nor had any ship from the Pacific fleet ever docked there. Still, the threat—to a base that didn’t exist—was added to the matrix. Another cable came in from a military investigations unit that bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post exchange on an American base in East Asia. One investigator joked to a friend that perhaps the United States could locate the al-Qaeda leader by tracing the Visa card he used at the PX. The news about bin Laden’s shopping trip appeared in the matrix.
Then there was a phenomenon called “circular reporting.” After 9/11, hundreds of millions of dollars were pumped into intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which in turn used portions of the money to hire analysts. Within a few months, there were hundreds of new people available all around government to examine and interpret the same bits of detail. A report flowed in from a CIA analyst and was disproved. Days later, the same information—tweaked differently by another analyst—reappeared in the matrix. If investigators could not confirm that the supposed threat was a repeat, they had no choice but to chase down the worthless allegations again.
In one instance, an alcoholic was stopped by local law enforcement in Cleveland; he blurted out that there
was a plot to destroy an American Airlines flight leaving from Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The man’s statement bubbled up the line and landed in the matrix. The threat was investigated and dismissed as drunken ravings. Days later, another agency reported a plot to attack an American Airlines plane in Chicago, and a new investigation led back to the same alcoholic. The story reappeared on the threat list at least two more times.
But the matrix could not be ignored, because alongside the junk were terrifying nuggets of credible intelligence. There was detailed and corroborated intelligence about terrorist plans to murder hundreds of schoolchildren, to rapidly execute scores of citizens in ways designed to leave Americans feeling unsafe even in their homes, to use truck bombs and other explosives to destroy buildings or infrastructure, and others.
Information from foreign intelligence services was equally frightening. One European agency reported that radiation meters had detected potentially lethal material coming across a border; subsequent information suggested that it had been smuggled from one country to the next by a terrorist group. But the suspects—along with their unknown shipment—had disappeared into the second country. Multiple reports came in from overseas that al-Qaeda was engaged in an aggressive effort in Malaysia to develop anthrax weapons, raising strong concerns in Washington given the recent terrorist attacks using the bacteria.
These domestic and international reports weighed heavily on Bush—it was a daily dose of horror, depictions of the depraved cruelty that the human mind could conceive. No matter how unlikely some of the scenarios might be, they seemed less improbable than the idea of crashing hijacked planes into buildings would have been before 9/11.
Bush and Cheney told their staffs that they would not stand by agonizing about these heinous plots to murder untold thousands. The administration was going to be aggressive, forward-leaning, pushing as far to the line as possible. Their job was to ensure the safety and security of the American people, and they would do whatever it took to meet that duty.
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