The Targeter

by Nada Bakos

  Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni extremist organization mostly made up of Iraqi Kurds, had been formed in 2001, prior to Zarqawi’s move into Iraq, when various regional terror groups consolidated their power. Those groups’ general aim had been to establish one true Islamic caliphate, and they concluded that working together would give them greater strength and a wider recruiting network than working alone would. AI welcomed fighters fleeing Afghanistan after the US invasion—and that included Zarqawi, provided he aligned his forces with theirs.

  At the time, Zarqawi was on the run. Once US forces overran Herat, he fled west with a small band of loyal followers into the border towns of Iran. We surmised that the Iranian government was cracking down on al Qaida refugees, setting Zarqawi on the move once more. Aligning with AI in their mountain stronghold of northern Iraq, therefore, might have been a move born of necessity for Zarqawi—or maybe it simply accelerated his larger plan.

  The Jordanian had long believed that “sooner or later, the Americans were sure to make the mistake of invading Iraq,” according to Sayf al-Adl, Zarqawi’s former al Qaida handler. Once the coalition tore down Hussein’s regime, Zarqawi thought, he would tear apart the rebuilding efforts—and from the ashes of Iraq, the caliphate could rise. So he agreed to align with AI and focus on northern Iraq. “The choice was not arbitrary,” Adl said, “but well considered.”

  Relocating Zarqawi’s training enterprise was an elaborate undertaking, however. For assistance, he called upon a friend and key facilitator we would later identify as twenty-nine-year-old Luay Muhammad Hajj Bakr al-Saqa. The son of a wealthy factory owner in Aleppo, Syria, Saqa had affiliated himself with Zarqawi in Herat, Afghanistan. Within a few years he had established himself as an experienced facilitator, doling out fake passports and acting as an intermediary between terror cells along the Syrian-Turkey-Iraq border area.

  In that role, he’d invited Zarqawi to join al Qaida’s plan to blow up hotels and tourist landmarks in Amman on January 1, 2000. The millennium bombing plot was disrupted by Jordanian authorities in November of 1999, and both Saqa and Zarqawi were sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison. Foiled or not, that plan began a long professional connection for the two men. In 2002, when Zarqawi had his sights set on northern Iraq in anticipation of a US invasion, he clearly reconnected with Saqa, and soon Saqa began coordinating logistics to help Zarqawi establish a new camp in AI’s mountain stronghold. In no time at all, a steady drip of new fighters and equipment began flowing along the rat lines, as the military called them, to Khurmal from Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, Libya, and two dozen other countries throughout Europe and the Middle East.

  The full scope and capabilities of that training camp remain to this day a topic of debate, inside the government and out.

  Our team received Agency reports from the field at the time saying that Zarqawi and his growing band of fighters had established a crude toxins laboratory in Khurmal, where they began toying with rudimentary biological weapons such as cyanide gas and aerosolized ricin. We knew that because the CIA knew exactly where Zarqawi was at the time. A small team of Agency operatives had infiltrated northern Iraq prior to the US invasion for a counterterrorism mission from July 2002 to May 2003. In the process, they found Zarqawi’s new home, right as he was becoming a household name in the intelligence community.

  Thanks to ongoing feedback from the field, Jim, an Agency colleague in CTC’s Weapons of Mass Destruction department, was able to follow Zarqawi’s increased testing of those contact toxins throughout 2002. First, the Jordanian and his AI associates set up a ramshackle operation to tinker with blocks of cyanide salt. The common mining chemical could have been dangerous had they mixed it with another substance to create a toxic vapor, but instead they almost entirely defanged it by mixing it with aloe and horse liniments, hoping someone might fall ill after slathering it on in large quantities.

  Then the group tried the same with ricin, a poison that occurs naturally in castor beans. But like cyanide, ricin’s molecules are too large to be absorbed through unbroken skin. Zarqawi’s dabbling in chemistry simply made no sense. As one Agency analyst pointed out to me, “Zarqawi was a dropout, a drug dealer, and a thug. At no point in there do we think he became a chemist.”

  Stray dogs and miscellaneous barnyard animals had become unwitting subjects for the terrorists’ toxin tests. I thought back to those sunny mornings on my grandparents’ farm and my horses. It’s funny what resonates with each of us: Zarqawi’s torturing of a donkey and other animals might have marked the first time I wanted to eliminate the man myself.

  One group that took exceptional interest in Zarqawi’s chemical testing, however, was the Bush administration, an interest that continued into early 2003.

  “Well if you’re focused specifically on the question of the links between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda,” Douglas Feith, then the under secretary of defense for policy, told Australia’s ABC News on February 21, 2003, “people who do not see the link are just not familiar with the evidence.” The connection, he said, included “combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.”

  Soon after, on March 9, 2003, the White House national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said on Face the Nation: “The strongest link of Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda… first of all, [is] a poisons master named Al Zarqawi.” She added, “And secondly, [there is] a very strong link to training al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons techniques.”

  The general idea that Zarqawi was pursuing chemical weapons was indeed real, even if the framing was markedly off. Yet the framing raised an obvious question, considering the intelligence pouring in from the field, which was perhaps best articulated by then Senator Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware, the day after Powell discussed the Khurmal camp in his presentation before the UN. “Why have we not taken it out?” Biden asked the secretary during a Senate foreign relations committee hearing. “Why have we let it sit there if it’s such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?”

  Powell said he could not discuss the decision-making process in public. Our unit in Langley still hoped a swift strike on the Khurmal camp might be coming in the wake of Powell’s UN presentation and Senate appearance, but weeks went by without any military response at all. NBC News would later report that the US military had drawn up possible plans to hit the site with cruise missiles, but “the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.” After that, the administration returned to its talking points and the talk-show circuit.

  In the Global War on Terror, Cheney said on Meet the Press on March 16, 2003, “we also must address the questions of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard.”

  Cheney concluded with the infamous observation “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

  “Seriously?” I muttered to myself.

  By early 2003, I’d taken to watching those Sunday shows regularly because I saw that the tough questions administration officials fumbled during the discussions invariably became research topics for the team days ahead. At times, they’d quite literally make me scream. I became so fixated on the Sunday-morning circuit that I pleaded with Roger—he and I had begun our relationship in earnest at that point, and I was at his row house when the infamous Cheney segment aired—to buy his first TV set in years so we wouldn’t have to cut our Saturday date nights short. But even though he bought the TV, he usually let me watch those shows alone. I can’t say that I blame him.

  In retrospect, I think online dating was my first act of targeting.

  I was single for a few years after moving to DC, choosing instead to focus on friends and finding a job. I made a few friends at the Agency on my winding path to CTC, and they invited me to wine-and-knitting parties, which was actually a thing that thirty-year-old cos
mopolitan women did at the time. But I was always hesitant about dating any of the men I worked with.

  For a time, part of me hoped for some celestial Hollywood moment when a stranger and I would lament the endless wait for a Red Line train or a guy with an accent would say something charming while we were standing in line at the bagel place—but that didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. It surely didn’t help that the north Dupont Circle neighborhood, where I rented my first apartment, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of straight men at the time. I think it was the annual 17th Street High Heel Race, featuring a wave of cross-dressers roaring past my place, that really tipped me off.

  That’s not to say I didn’t have fun being single in a big city for the first time in my adult life. There may have been a first date or two that started at the Park Bench Pub and ended after breakfast. And I laugh at the memory of one New Year’s Eve when my friend Sara and I bought tickets for a party at a DC hotel. We each flirted just enough to find a guy to kiss at midnight a few minutes later; then we strolled out by ourselves to grab some falafel in Adams Morgan. But in terms of an actual relationship, it didn’t take long to realize how insular DC’s cliquishness is when you’re working sixty-five-hour weeks. So I turned to Match.com—an admission that practically feels old-fashioned today but that I would make to absolutely no one in 2002.

  I must have rewritten my bio three dozen times; it’s hard to imagine there is anything more awkward than writing a dating profile. I uploaded a photo taken from a distance, which presumably hurt my prospects, but it felt like the smartest move for a woman, let alone someone in the CIA. Besides, I thought, I’m smart, funny, and engaged with world events—that’ll come through, and that’s got nothing to do with my photo. And hey, I’m just looking for someone with a job who’d be fun to hang out with. How hard can that be?

  Answer? Pretty freaking hard.

  For the following few weeks, I checked my e-mail at night over takeout sushi and practically lost my appetite. Or maybe just a little of my will to live.

  Strangers called me babe, chick, and honey. Guys asked what size bra I wore and how often I slept with a man on a first date. Two-thirds of the first e-mails I got were clearly copied and pasted—and a stunning number of those were vulgar.

  When it wasn’t blatantly ridiculous or demeaning, the whole thing felt like a slog, especially when I was clicking through photos of men who spent way too much time in the bathroom. Before long my standards were falling so fast that I was just hoping to find a guy who didn’t have more crap in his hair than I did. “A normal guy!” I wanted to scream. “That’s all I’m asking for!”

  On the few occasions I did meet a guy through the site, my general hope was that he’d either be really amazing or batshit insane. Because three hours after the fact, one made almost as good a story as the other. In the years since, it’s become clear I wasn’t alone in that regard.

  I’ve heard about guys who randomly stopped a conversation midsentence to snort coke off the bar. A guy who spent the first thirty minutes talking about his pet chinchilla—which, not coincidentally, was exactly how long the date lasted. (Apparently chinchillas can jump really high.) The guy who showed up to the date three drinks in, spilled his beer on the woman, and then instead of apologizing waved the bartender over to refill his glass. Then there was the guy who probably wasn’t the one who stole his date’s purse that night, though we’re still not positive. The guy who cried in the restaurant over his prior failed “relationship,” which gets quotation marks because he’d been catfished and was still in love with a woman who didn’t exist. The handful of guys who told me they were in their thirties, then showed up actually pushing sixty and wondered why I cut our date short.

  So it was for me for a few months—a surreal experience followed by lame conversation followed by an actual sweet guy who stopped returning my correspondence only to pop back up months later and ask if I was still single.

  There was an important lesson I took from that, though. A girlfriend pointed out that our dating challenge didn’t lie in looking for Mr. Right. He never existed anyway. The challenge for us was making the best choices we could based on profiles and initial communication. Once we avoided the extremes, we had to let ourselves be open to recognizing someone we could build a real foundation with.

  Waiting for that guy to find me clearly wasn’t working, so I went on the offensive. I updated my profile with a photo of my Saint Bernard, who was living with my mother back in Montana, and took matters into my own hands, scouring profiles and targeting men who seemed like they could be datable. That wasn’t exactly a high bar, but Match.com hadn’t given me a whole lot of hope, either.

  Then one evening, the sight of a hat made me pause on a profile.

  The man in the photo was clearly on a river someplace, holding two steelhead trout. His broken-in baseball cap had been jostled around, and on it, in big white letters, were the words POWDER HORN—the massive sporting goods store that’s stood for decades in downtown Bozeman. I sent him a short note that night.

  Over a few e-mails through the site, Roger told me he was a DC transplant originally from Buffalo and a telecom engineer with an outdoorsy streak. His last name, Bakos, sounded a whole lot like Bacchus, the name of my Saint Bernard, which made me wonder about kismet. Until he stopped e-mailing me. Roger later told me that he’d been living in Baltimore at the time and thought he couldn’t sustain a relationship with someone who was in DC. It was too far away. A few months later he e-mailed me a mea culpa, however, asking for another try. I responded, “Why do you suddenly think I’m all that and a cup of coffee?” He said the right things, though, after I made him explain it a few more times to convince me he was worth it; then we agreed to meet.

  We arrived that fateful Saturday evening at the now-shuttered Zebra Lounge in northern DC, both with friends in tow on the way to other plans.

  To this day I’m not sure that Roger had any real idea what he was doing that night. He was deeply earnest and just slightly awkward enough to be endearing. I loved that about him. I immediately felt safe around him—and his friend Grant was amusing, which was good, because Grant ended up as something like the Cyrano de Bergerac of Cleveland Park that night.

  “So what made you respond to my e-mail?” I asked Roger early on.

  And then there was a pause. A long one. Eventually, my eyes drifted over the crowded room, then back to Roger, who seemed to be thinking pretty hard. At that point, Grant leaned over and whispered something to him, and Roger replied, “I thought you looked smart and interesting.”

  I laughed.

  Prompted by Grant, Roger walked me to my car later that evening. He called the next day. We’ve been together ever since.

  Not that it’s always been easy, mind you—no relationship ever is. As unhinged as life can seem for Agency personnel caught in a work maelstrom, that lifestyle exacts a stiff toll on their partners, too. Trust often feels like an elusive thing. Spouses generally have to lie about what their loved ones do for work—to the extent that they truly understand it at all. I waited weeks to tell Roger even the basics of what I did all day in the Iraq unit, even though at the time I was an analyst and not undercover—so I could tell him where I worked.

  The culture and peculiarities of an Agency life are difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced them firsthand. There’s a reason so many CIA employees marry other CIA employees—then in many cases get divorced and marry different CIA employees. Roger and I were both learning all that for the first time.

  One of my clearest memories of our early relationship was Roger arriving at my apartment one evening in late 2002, once the tempo in the Iraq unit had become fully frantic. I was working the “briefer shift” at the time, arriving by 4:00 a.m. to digest all the information on Iraq before the president’s and cabinet-level briefers arrived at Langley. The work created a level of stress that manifested itself differently for everyone on the team—and I’ve learned over the years that I have a pretty tel
ltale sign, which Roger had picked up on. When he arrived at my apartment, he was clearly troubled and clearly having trouble figuring out how to talk about it.

  Roger led me over to the couch in the living room and sat down.

  “Nada,” Roger said. “The thing is…”

  He shuffled his hands and sighed.

  “You gained weight.”

  I shot up in my seat. My mouth fell open.

  “I mean,” he continued, which was a real mistake, “I’ve been telling myself you’re the same girl I fell for. And you are!”

  I jumped up from the couch. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped. “The stuff I do for this country every day, and you’re shaming me for gaining weight?” I was really ramping up. “Who does that?”

  He had tapped into my profoundly anti–body shaming streak, and not in a good way. Define me and reward me based on my merit—that’s all I’ve ever asked. But to do it by pants size? At that moment, I thought back to the gross Match.com e-mails I’d gotten from guys who wrote “I only date women smaller than a size 2” and “I’m really looking for a fellow ectomorph.”

  I wanted to write back to those guys: “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m looking for a guy who isn’t a narcissist.” But I didn’t. It seemed clear those men had self-esteem issues—and that my size, depending on the time of year and the selection of baked goods nearby, really wasn’t the problem.