500 Days
Page 57
By day’s end, Mora had met with the chief legal officers for each branch of the military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Judge Advocate General Corps. He reviewed the contents and implications of the Rumsfeld authorization with each one and repeated the arguments he had given to Haynes about why it should be rewritten.
Late in the day, Haynes called.
“Alberto, I wanted you to know that the Secretary has been briefed about your concerns,” he said. “We’re reviewing the matter, and I think changes in the interrogation policy are in the offing. That might happen as early as next week.”
Mora smiled. “Thanks, Jim. That’s great to hear.”
• • •
The next day, Saturday, Haynes went back to Rumsfeld.
“Boss, we need a breather on this policy,” Haynes said. “I strongly recommend that you rescind everything you approved so we can take a look at everything and make sure all of this is being done right,”
Rumsfeld gave a vague and noncommittal reply. His mind was elsewhere—on preparations for an invasion of Iraq. This clamor about Guantanamo was an unwanted distraction. Haynes left the office with no clue of what his boss might do to resolve the problem.
• • •
Colonel Larry James, the new Guantanamo psychologist, was making the rounds at about 1:00 A.M. in the buildings that housed the interrogation booths. From an observation room, he heard yelling, screaming, and the sounds of furniture being thrown around. He peeked into the booth from behind a one-way mirror to see what the ruckus was all about.
Inside, James saw one interrogator and three guards wrestling with a detainee. The man was wearing only pink panties, a wig, and lipstick, and now the soldiers were struggling to dress him in a pink nightgown. James felt an urge to rush into the booth and call a halt to the frightening episode but hesitated. Maybe something was happening that he didn’t understand. He opened his thermos and poured a cup of coffee, watching as he waited for the events to play themselves out.
They didn’t. After several minutes, the fighting hadn’t let up.
I need to stop this right now.
James knocked on the door and walked in. He tried hard not to register any shock or disgust on his face at the bizarre scene unfolding in front of him. He called out to the interrogator.
“Hey,” he said calmly, “you want some coffee?”
The interrogator got off the detainee, breathing hard. “I sure do, Colonel,” he said. “I’ll take you up on that.”
James looked over at the three guards. “Let the detainee up and put him in a chair,” he said. “Give him a break.”
He poured the interrogator a cup of coffee and the two of them stepped out of the booth.
The next step. James the army psychologist was about to assume the role of James the army interrogator—although he would be questioning the frustrated soldier, trying to nudge him away from the fruitless path of confrontation. And he would go about it by using relationship-building techniques.
Over the next few minutes, James spoke calmly to the soldier about everything other than the interrogation. Fishing, hunting, the relative quality of a .45-caliber pistol compared to a nine-millimeter.
Slowly, James maneuvered the conversation around to the session he had just witnessed. The interrogator was still simmering over an insult the detainee had screamed at him two days earlier after spitting at him.
“ ‘I’m gonna butt-fuck your wife’ is how I think the interpreter said it, sir,” the interrogator said, the anger boiling up.
Still, he had doubts about how he was handling the situation. “Would you be willing to review the case with me tomorrow, sir?” he asked.
“Sure,” James replied.
• • •
The detainee was a very bad guy. His file revealed that he was a hard-core terrorist and had been aggressively resistant to questioning. But manhandling and humiliating him were guaranteed to fail, James knew.
When he held the promised review with the interrogator, James asked him how it was going.
“Sir, the problem is that the fucker won’t talk to me,” he replied.
Okay, James said. He asked what the detainee was being fed. The same meals that soldiers in the field get, the interrogator said. Nothing hot, nothing particularly tasty, but good enough.
“Here’s what I recommend,” James said. Go to the base McDonald’s and pick up a fish sandwich. Then buy the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue at the PX, he said; Muslim or no, the man hadn’t seen a woman in a year.
The soldier looked aghast. “You don’t want me to give that stuff to him, do you, sir?” he asked. “’Cause that just ain’t right, sir.”
Not yet, James said. Instead, go into the interrogation booth and eat the sandwich. Have some pistachios and tea as well. Read the magazine. Don’t ask the man a single question, don’t yell at him. Do the same thing for three days.
“Well, hell, I don’t mind eating and looking at girls, sir, but that’s not my job,” the interrogator said. “I’m supposed to be getting intel from this guy.”
Just give it a try, James said. “At the end of the week, bring an extra fish sandwich. Let’s see what happens.”
It worked. When the soldier arrived with the extra meal, he casually handed it to the detainee. He let him have the magazine. Slowly, the prisoner warmed to his former tormentor. He started talking, revealing useful intelligence.
A meal from McDonald’s had pulled off what a year of abuse had failed to achieve.
• • •
At the White House, Bush was meeting with his national security team for an in-depth review of the administration’s counterterrorism efforts.
One of the biggest challenges they faced, Tenet said, was al-Qaeda’s continued success in attracting new foot soldiers. Rice and Wolfowitz agreed, fretting that American efforts had failed to stem the influx of jihadist recruits.
Bush waved a hand dismissively. “Victory will take care of that problem.”
Some of the people in the room were flabbergasted. In a single sentence, they thought, Bush had revealed volumes about his strategic thinking. There was no question that he was referring to the impending invasion of Iraq. Somehow, Bush had come to believe that ousting Saddam would—what? frighten? impress?—extremists so much that they would abandon jihad.
It was, one aide believed, an extraordinarily dangerous assumption.
• • •
“Should the interrogations of al-Qahtani continue?” Rumsfeld asked.
It was Sunday, January 12, and Rumsfeld had just telephoned General Tom Hill, the SOUTHCOM commander. Jim Haynes had reported that interrogators had forced an enema on al-Qahtani, Rumsfeld said. Now he was pushing for Rumsfeld to withdraw his authorization for the aggressive interrogation techniques. But if the military was done questioning al-Qahtani, the whole point was moot.
Hill replied that he didn’t know where things stood with al-Qahtani. “I’ll discuss the question with General Miller,” he said.
He contacted Miller at Guantanamo that same day and explained the secretary’s concerns. He called back Rumsfeld in less than an hour. No enema had been given to al-Qahtani in an interrogation, he said, and the detainee had yet to provide much information.
“I recommend that we continue the interrogation,” Hill said.
Rumsfeld agreed.
• • •
His decision didn’t last long. A few hours later, Rumsfeld called Hill again. Stop everything but Category I techniques, he said. He needed time to think about this.
• • •
That afternoon, the secure red line phone in Haynes’s office rang. General Hill was calling, and he was furious.
“Jim, I heard from the secretary, and what you’re telling him is bullshit!” Hill fumed. “We gave al-Qahtani an enema a month and a half ago because the doc said he needed one. We don’t do that stuff in interrogations!”
Already, Hill said, they were suffering the consequences. Rumsfeld ordered
him to suspend everything except Category I. They could yell at al-Qahtani and deceive him. Great, like that was going to work all by itself.
“Tom, I’m glad you’re not doing anything wrong,” Haynes replied. “But it’s my judgment that we should take a breather and take another look at this because there are too many rumors.”
Hill grumbled a response and hung up.
• • •
The partial—and temporary—suspension of the harshest forms of interrogation wasn’t enough, Haynes decided. It was a halfhearted half measure. The entire authorization needed to be rescinded and a new one written from scratch.
Haynes typed a memo for Rumsfeld that would withdraw his interrogation order. Now all he had to do was persuade the secretary to sign it.
• • •
On the morning of January 15, Alberto Mora handed his assistant a draft memo and asked her to drop it off with Haynes’s secretary. His high hopes from the previous Friday had been dashed. Haynes had arranged for those meetings with the lawyers and then . . . nothing. No new information, no suggestion from Haynes that the policy was under review.
That morning, he realized he had never put his objections in writing. So he wrote the memo detailing his concerns about the interrogation policy and his belief that it authorized, at a minimum, cruel treatment and, at worst, torture. He addressed the draft to Haynes and Jane Dalton, chief legal advisor to the Joint Chiefs.
After the memo was left at Haynes’s office, Mora called him to explain why he had felt compelled to write it.
“Jim,” he said, “I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable, given the amount of time that’s passed, that I haven’t put my view on the interrogation issues in writing.”
He hadn’t signed the memo yet, Mora said, so it didn’t need to be treated yet as an official document. “But,” he said, “I’ll be signing it out late this afternoon unless I hear definitively that the use of the interrogation techniques has been or is being suspended.”
Haynes asked Mora to stop by that afternoon. He didn’t mention that he had already sent Rumsfeld the proposed withdrawal order, but he still had to discuss it with the secretary before he could be confident it would be signed.
By the time Mora showed up in his office, Haynes hoped, the whole issue would already be resolved.
• • •
About that same time in London, Tony Blair was attending a meeting at the Ministry of Defence for a briefing on Iraq. An array of senior officers, including Admiral Michael Boyce, the chief of the defense staff, and the heads of each armed forces branch, was there in full uniform. The room was packed, with staffers crammed against the walls on three sides.
Boyce spoke first. The Americans, he said, were set to launch an invasion of Iraq. “We anticipate that President Bush will make a decision on February 15 and they would go within twelve days or so to a massive air, sea, and land operation,” he said.
He glanced up from some notes. “It is going to be called ‘Shock and Awe’ and the scale will reflect that,” he said. “There will be hundreds of plane sorties from day one, aimed at wiping out Saddam’s infrastructure and playing for a ‘house of cards’ effect.”
Britain would deploy large numbers of planes and ships, along with up to forty-two thousand troops. The Americans would send in as many as three hundred thousand soldiers. Iraq’s oil fields would be seized immediately, which, he said, might inflame the conspiracy theories about the war’s true purpose.
That probably wouldn’t be a problem, said naval commander Alan West. “There will be so much going on in the first day or so that the international media won’t know where to go,” he said.
Either way, the fields had to be secured quickly in order to prevent the ecological disaster that would ensue if Saddam blew them up in hopes of sowing global economic chaos.
“What if Saddam retreats to fortress Baghdad?” Blair asked.
The expectation, Boyce said, was that the scale of the attack would break Saddam’s grip on Iraq, and without the terror he inspired in his people, he would have nowhere to hide. His own countrymen would turn him in.
“Give me your judgment on the plan,” Blair said. “Will it work?”
“Yes,” Boyce replied. “It will.”
“But I’m concerned about the number of bombs planned to be dropped on Baghdad and the risk of collateral damage and civilian casualties,” Blair said.
The technology was different than in the Persian Gulf War, an advisor from British intelligence said. The accuracy of the precision-guided munitions—smart bombs—had improved dramatically since then. Still, this was sure to be a bloody war, and the scale of the bombing campaign would unquestionably result in civilian deaths.
Blair mulled that over. “We need to get the proper humanitarian support in place,” he said.
Plans should be formulated immediately for dealing with Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion, he said. Millions of people would suddenly be without a government, probably without water or electricity. America and Britain had the moral duty to tackle those problems and couldn’t wait until after Saddam fell to prepare a plan.
Then, the biggest question. “What is the chance of Saddam using his WMD?” Blair asked.
He might want to try, Boyce said, but probably couldn’t succeed. “The intelligence leaves no ambiguity over Saddam’s willingness to use WMD if he judged the time was right,” he said. But, since the Iraqi dictator was currently concealing his weapons from the U.N. inspectors, he might not have enough time to get them ready for action.
“That’s the reason Tommy Franks has gone with the doctrine of overwhelming force,” Boyce said. “The Americans believe that Saddam is operating on an assumption that the operation would be done by air strikes first, and then move in on land. The plan is to catch him off guard.”
Anxiety was etched on the prime minister’s face. “What could the worst outcome of action be?” he asked.
Of course, the use of weapons of mass destruction, Boyce replied, and the burning of the Iraqi oil fields—just because they doubted Saddam could do either one didn’t mean they were right. Then, the day after, when Saddam was gone, chaos might ensue.
“Any rapid regime collapse followed by a power vacuum could result in internecine fighting between the Shia and Sunni populations,” Boyce said, “and adventuring by adjacent countries and ethnic groups that could irretrievably fracture the country.”
Blair thanked the officers and left the room with a coterie of assistants. As the group marched solemnly down a dimly lit hallway, the only noise was the clicking of heels on the floor.
Outside, they climbed into waiting cars. Blair said nothing. The die was cast; the Americans were going on the attack. The shooting and dying could begin in just a few weeks. And they weren’t prepared for the aftermath.
• • •
A few hours later, Mora arrived for his meeting with Haynes. The deputy general counsel, Daniel Dell’Orto, joined them.
Haynes slid Mora’s draft memo across the table to him. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this,” he said. “Surely you must know how I feel about these issues and the impact of what you’ve done.”
“No, Jim, I don’t. I have no idea if you agree with me totally, or disagree, or come out somewhere in the middle. You never said anything.”
Haynes laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
A moment passed. “Well, I can tell you that the secretary is considering suspending his authorization later today,” Haynes said.
Considering? What did that mean? Maybe even Haynes didn’t know, Mora thought. He hesitated before speaking.
“Well, I’m delighted to hear that,” Mora finally said, choosing his words carefully. “Then I won’t be signing out my memo.”
Haynes nodded. “Let me get back to you later,” he said.
• • •
He called Mora within a few hours.
“Good news,” he said. “Rumsfeld suspended the techniques.”
• • •
In Paris, a swarm of police motorcycles escorted a black SUV down the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré toward the Élysée Palace, the official residence of President Jacques Chirac.
The entourage reached the front gate encased by a massive archway and headed inside. Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei stepped out of the SUV and were greeted at the entrance by an aide who accompanied them inside for a meeting with Chirac.
It was January 17. Blix and ElBaradei had come to Paris to brief the French head of state on their progress in Iraq. The news was not good. Inspectors had just located a crate of warheads for the delivery of chemical weapons. They contained no illegal agents, but that was beside the point. The Iraqis were still required to have reported them to the U.N. Then the inspectors turned up a stash of documents at the home of a nuclear scientist describing how to use lasers for uranium enrichment missile guidance. The Iraqis insisted this was just an instance of a single scientist squirreling away his own papers, but the weapons inspectors didn’t buy that.
Chirac listened impassively as Blix laid out the facts. “The situation has been very tense,” he said. “There hasn’t been any real effort by the Iraqis to solve any of the outstanding disarmament issues.”
Still, the inspectors were stymied. They hadn’t uncovered any indisputable evidence that Iraq was secreting away weapons of mass destruction. Mobile labs for creating toxins and anthrax, underground facilities, dual-use equipment ready for rapid transformation into weapons—nothing like that had turned up yet. His team would have to keep looking for them.
“It is also possible,” he said, “that few weapons of mass destruction actually exist.”
Chirac was unimpressed. “I do not believe that Iraq poses any real threat, at least not one that would call for a military intervention,” he said. “Our intelligence service does not have any serious evidence that these weapons exist.”
There was no doubt that, in the early 1990s, Iraq had possessed such armaments. “It is my view that the original weapons inspections revealed what we needed to know,” Chirac said. “They succeeded. Iraq has already been disarmed.”