In part, this was due to the element of danger that had always been present, but in equal part it was because of the freedom my teammates and I had experienced in dealing with the uncertainties and challenges we faced. This had meant that whatever decisions we made, we did so knowing our fate and our mission’s success was in our own hands and no one else’s. To its credit, Headquarters had recognized the dynamic nature of the Afghanistan theater of operations and had refrained from dictating actions from thousands of miles away, allowing the teams on the ground to operate in a near autonomous fashion and to call the shots as each saw fit. This approach was a blessing to every CIA officer who was serving in Afghanistan at the time.
Yet another reason why I had come to like being in Afghanistan had not so much to do with mission, or even having the freedom to make my own decisions, but rather it had to do with the environment in which I was living. It was simply more satisfying to spend my days outside, surrounded by stunningly stark vistas and drenched by the clear sunlight of the high desert than it was to pass so much of my time sitting in a fluorescent-lit building staring into a computer screen. Life in Afghanistan had a course texture to it compared to the smooth plastic feel of life in America, or for that matter, most other modern countries. I knew I would miss that coarseness and the authenticity it seemed to give to each day. This realization made me consider the not insignificant price that I was paying to be a member of our modern civilization, and its ramifications went far beyond whether I should stay in Afghanistan or not.
But of a more immediate nature, when I thought about my brief Afghanistan sojourn, the truth was that despite its horribly tragic catalyst and ongoing hardships and dangers, my experiences beginning on the day after 9/11 to that moment had taken place during what seemed to be an otherworldly time, almost as if a parenthesis had been inserted into the cosmic flow, within which normal procedures and conventions did not apply. Individuals and organizations had sacrificed and cooperated toward a common cause at a level I had never before witnessed. At a personal level, people just treated each other better than they had previously. Turf and ego battles, with the rarest of exceptions, had not surfaced, at least not at the level at which I was operating, and the focus had been only on the mission. Unquestionably, it had been an extraordinary time, during which I had worked with extraordinary people who had put aside any fear they had, and with great courage they had done a job that had to be done. My feelings about leaving Afghanistan reminded me of General Lee’s observation to Longstreet at Fredericksburg when he is reported to have said, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.” The General definitely knew what he was talking about.
But I also knew that all good things had to come to an end, as would this unique period of unfettered cooperation and respectful interaction. The handwriting was already on the wall, as plans were being made for introducing large numbers of conventional U.S. military forces into the country, even as CIA worked to bolster its own presence many times over. What we had would not last under these circumstances, and the cosmic parentheses would soon disappear. Too many bureaucratic interests apart from mission, and too many over-sized egos that infected all large institutions would ensure that.
I had been privileged and fortunate to serve at this special time, and the thought came to me that maybe I should “get while the getting is good.” The other thought that arose was the promise that I had made to my wife, in what seemed like eons ago, that I would come home as soon as I could. Well, “as soon as I could” meant getting on that MC-130 that night. With that thought in mind I made my decision.
Unfortunately, Shirzai had left that morning for a visit to another part of the province so I could not say goodbye to him. I felt badly about this. What he and his fighters had done for the U.S. was hard to overstate. By acting as surrogate ground forces against our enemies, many American lives and much treasure had been saved. I wanted to personally thank him for this, but it would have to remain unfinished business.
39
Jacobabad Revisited
I ARRIVED BACK IN Jacobabad early in the morning. I had more gear than I wanted to carry, so I hiked over to the CIA tent to get a pickup to transport it. I woke up Doug and asked him for the truck keys. He started to get up but I told him there was no need and to stay in bed. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t need his help, and I said no thanks, I’m fine. He went back to bed and I drove over and picked up the gear, and then racked out at the tent until daylight came.
Later I was told that Doug saw my consideration to let him sleep as evidence that my time in Afghanistan had “changed” me for the better, and that I was no longer the jerk he had encountered when he had tried to get me to sign for the money.
In the morning I learned there was another CIA team at Jacobabad that had been waiting to go into Afghanistan, but it had been ordered to return to Islamabad to await a later deployment. The CIA team leader and an SF Sergeant named Nathan Chapman, as well as myself, headed over to the Air Force mess hall for breakfast. Over my first American-style breakfast in many weeks, we talked about the situation in Afghanistan, with the team leader expressing concern that it would all be over before his team even got there. I told him not to worry. It wasn’t going to be over for a while. It was a relaxing hour, and as we all do, Nathan talked about his wife and kids back home. At some point, one of them asked me when I would leave for the U.S. I glanced down at the date on my watch to figure that out, and when I did I realized for the first time that it was my birthday. The two of them laughed and wished me a happy birthday. For that and other reasons, it was a memorable birthday breakfast.
Afterward I turned my Glock and AK-47 over to Doug. He didn’t know that the AK was not the same one I had been issued, and he accepted it without question. Months later, however, my trading out the rifle caught up to me and I was notified that I was the subject of a “Report of Survey” investigation in that there was no record of my having turned in the rifle I was issued. I had to explain why that was the case, and in the end no action was taken against me. It was a small price to pay in order to carry a rifle I felt comfortable with.
I spent the rest of the day in Jacobabad helping the CIA team load its gear onto a C-130 for transport to Islamabad. A few others who were headed up to Islamabad helped out as well, and Nathan and his non-stop jokes and funny stories kept us all laughing. His extroverted personality and quick wit combined to make him a force of nature, and he made a big impression on me.
Late in the afternoon we flew to Islamabad. I only spent a couple of days there. Prior to leaving I looked up the CIA team leader and Nathan to say goodbye. I told both of them that if they made it to Afghanistan to be careful and then repeated what I had once told the Headquarters officer who advised me of Mike Spann’s death: Afghanistan is still a dangerous, uncontrolled place, and anything could happen there at any time.
40
Home
I RETURNED TO THE U.S. a couple of days before Christmas, when the holiday season was in full swing. It was wonderful to see the family again, and to drive through our neighborhood and say hello to friends and neighbors who had no idea where I had been. As usual, our house was warmly decorated and the Christmas tree was up and glowing brightly.
Despite the ambiance, I was unable to muster any holiday spirit, and I had the sense that I had left something undone back in Afghanistan; that maybe I had made the wrong decision in coming home. I was taking a few days of leave during the holidays, but I was anxious to get back to work even though I didn’t know exactly what that would be when I returned. I did know I’d be reporting back to NE Division and that my time with CTC/SO was at its end.
A couple of weeks later, on my first day back at Headquarters, I decided that before reporting in to my new office I would stop by CTC to say hello to my colleagues there. Because the office had moved, I had to find it, and when I did I was impressed by the large office space it now occupied. The place was completely changed. There were many more pe
ople assigned there so a lot of faces I didn’t recognize.
While making my cubicle rounds saying hello to the people I knew, I happened to look up at a TV that was tuned to a news channel. I immediately recognized the face in the photograph being shown on the news report, and my stomach knotted up. It was Nathan Chapman, killed in action in Afghanistan. I didn’t want to believe it. Memories of the brief time I had spent with him instantly came flooding to my mind. Recalling his unrelenting humor, his irrepressible energy, and generally larger than life personality, made it even harder to accept that he was now dead.
As the news report continued, pictures of his wife and children were shown. They looked like a perfect family, and I remembered Nathan talking about them while we had breakfast together on my birthday only three weeks before. The reporter commented that Nathan was the first soldier to be killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan. Mike Spann was the Agency’s first enemy-killed casualty, and now Nathan held that distinction for the military.
The people around me headed off to a staff meeting. I was invited to attend but didn’t. After hearing the news of Nathan’s death, I just wanted to escape for a while.
I made my way through the rows of now empty cubicles toward the front door. As I did, I passed by a huge video monitor mounted on the wall. On the screen was a video feed that was streaming live images of six ghostly figures slowly making their way in single file down a dark and barren mountainside. They didn’t look like much more than stick men, their silhouettes glowing white against the mud-brown color of the ground. It was night where they were and they probably thought they couldn’t be seen. But they were wrong. The darkness could not hide them. They were absolutely luminous, in fact.
I looked around to ask if anyone knew where this was taking place, but there was no one to ask. They had all gone to the meeting. It was just the wide screen monitor, the six figures, and me.
There was no sound accompanying the video feed and no noise from the empty office. It was totally quiet. Although the men were thousands of miles away, I felt like I was there, high above their heads, secretly sharing a private moment with them from my omnipotent perch. I continued to watch and noticed that the group was using good military discipline, keeping their distance from one another as they picked their way around rocks and boulders. They made progress, but it was slow and the mountain was big.
Suddenly, silently, something new appeared on the upper left of the screen. It was a piece of earth erupting upward. Circular in shape, it lifted straight out of the ground and directly toward me. It reminded me of a splash of chocolate milk. It was not particularly close to the stick figures, but then, other splashes of earth followed. Rapidly the splashes rose up and within a few seconds they completely filled the screen.
How many splashes were there? I couldn’t tell. Dozens I suspected. I knew they had to be caused by bombs from conventional aircraft. The residue from the explosions filled the air and blended into a solid gray haze that obscured my view of what laid below. It didn’t matter. I knew that even if I could have seen the ground clearly, I wouldn’t have been able to see the stick figures anymore. They had been transformed from ghostly silhouettes to just ghosts.
I realized this was how it had all started those months before. Me standing in front of a screen, not at CIA, but at FBI Headquarters, watching violent images of planes crashing, buildings falling, and people dying. Now it was ending for me in much the same way. The difference this time was that the violence I was watching was not happening in my country, and it was not innocent people who were dying. Given the nature of the counterterrorism business, that was probably as good an indicator of success, or at least progress, as any.
I remained alone standing in front of the now dark monitor in the quiet room. Everyone was still at the meeting. It was business as usual, something I would have to get used to. It was Headquarters after all.
Epilogue
In JANUARY 2002, WHEN I walked out of the Counterterrorist Center and returned to work in the Near East Division, I believed my involvement with Afghanistan was finished. The Agency, however, had other thoughts on the subject, and I was asked to head up the Headquarters office that would support the new CIA station there. It was not an assignment that I had expected. I had assumed I would finally take the liaison officer position I was supposed to have taken months before at the FBI. Fresh from my experience in Afghanistan, however, I felt I had a personal investment in the future of that country, and I agreed to the proposed job. It would prove to be an interesting, although at times frustrating, experience.
During that two-year assignment, I would witness the limited expeditionary nature of the Agency’s involvement in Afghanistan transition to that of a large-scale entrenched presence. I would also watch relationships with the military and other government departments become encumbered by the return of bureaucratic practices and self-interested policies that had been minimized immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
Prior to assuming my new position, there had been no CIA station in the country for many years, and so no corresponding Headquarters office existed to support it. Therefore my first task would be to establish what would become the Afghanistan office. It was a “from the ground up” effort, with everything from office space to personnel needing to be found. Fortunately, this initiative was considered a priority by NE Division senior management, and within a relatively short time the new office was up and running. This was fortunate because events in Afghanistan were moving quickly. The fledgling Karzai government was struggling to establish itself, and the U.S. presence in the country was increasing dramatically from the few hundred Americans that were there when I left in December 2001. Had someone at the time told me that the number of Americans in country would one day reach into the many tens of thousands, and that the CIA station there would become the largest in the world, I would not have believed them.
The standup of the Afghanistan desk in NE Division did not mean that my old office in CTC went away. CTC/SO would continue to oversee CIA’s counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan, while the Afghanistan office would support the station’s traditional intelligence collection operations and liaison activities. To avoid confusion and duplication of effort, a clear definition of roles and responsibilities was required, as well as timely communication between the two offices. Toward that end I regularly attended CTC/SO staff meetings to ensure NE Division was kept in the loop on any significant CT developments in country that could affect NE Division’s operations.
Throughout the first half of 2002, many of the assignments of CIA personnel to Afghanistan were for short periods of time, usually averaging three months. This system required a constant rotation of officers, and it very quickly proved to be unsustainable from a personnel management standpoint. It also created problems with the continuity of operations in the field. Compounding these problems was that CIA’s mission continued to expand as the U.S. diplomatic presence and the number of U.S. military forces grew. This meant, among other things, that Station needed more resources to recruit and handle agents who could report intelligence on threats against the U.S. presence. As an organization, al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan had been largely destroyed and driven from the country, but serious threats from remaining Taliban elements and the terrorist group known as the Haqqani Network still remained.
As American lives were on the line, the mission to collect intelligence on these groups had to have the highest priority, but it did come at a cost to intelligence reporting on other high priority areas such as political stability in the country. “Mission creep” had arrived, and it became clear that we could not continue to staff and effectively operate our station and bases using mostly short-term officers. To address this, more and more longer-term positions were created, usually for a tour of one year. As these jobs came on line and were filled, the chaotic churn of people rotating in and out of Afghanistan slowed to a more manageable level. That said, the truth remained that CIA was not the U.S. military, and it simply did not ha
ve reserves of thousands of personnel that could be drawn upon to meet the ever-expanding intelligence requirements generated by U.S. policymakers and other institutions who needed CIA intelligence to help them do their jobs.
As the months went by, more and more officers were being posted to Afghanistan to serve in locations throughout the country. Of this group, a fair number were volunteers who were actively seeking to be assigned there. On those occasions when a volunteer would stop by my office to discuss a possible assignment in country, I would always try to get a feel for the officer’s motivation for wanting to go to Afghanistan. When the motivation seemed principally to be the extra money they would earn as a result of receiving danger pay and other hardship benefits, I would caution him or her that while Afghanistan was more stable than it had been when I was there, it continued to be a dangerous place, and the possibility that they could lose their lives there was a real one. I would ask if they were willing to risk having to pay that price for a bigger paycheck. Some of them were.
While most people’s reasons for wanting to serve in Afghanistan were a combination of factors, money being only one, I always believed the most important reason had to be belief in the mission of preventing Afghanistan from ever again becoming a sanctuary from which a terrorist group could strike the U.S. To my way of thinking, belief in this mission was the only thing that could justify putting your life at risk, and it was the only thing that would carry you through the day when circumstances became dangerous and uncertain. It would also be the only thing that would give some comfort to friends and family left behind if tragedy struck.
As I watched from Headquarters while our station and the official U.S. presence in Afghanistan grew, and as I read the intelligence reporting about the security situation there, I knew I needed to go back and see it for myself to really understand how things on the ground had changed since I left. In mid-fall 2002 I packed up my rucksack again, and along with another senior officer named Mike from CTC/SO I traveled back to Afghanistan for a short trip.
Foxtrot in Kandahar Page 17