The Targeter

by Nada Bakos

  “It’s good to see you again, Nada,” he said. “Can we come in for a bit?”

  For the first hour or so, the security team flipped through a binder about risk assessments, detailing any threatening online chatter the Agency had collected in the wake of the report’s release. There wasn’t much. Nonetheless, together we talked about our potential vulnerabilities, and the team from DC suggested a raft of ways to maximize our home’s protection. From there, we walked the team around our house and property, taking additional notes for fortifying our security setup. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you, too,” they said, “but there are things you might want to consider.” As luck would have it, our past trials in DIY installation would later come in handy as we followed up on their suggestions.

  Eventually, after a few hours, we all thanked each other, and I showed our visitors to the door.

  “You’ve got everything covered,” my former colleague said, “and you’ve got our cards if anything comes up. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  I forced a weak smile.

  “Thanks,” I said. “We appreciate it.”

  As I closed the door behind me, my body sagged. The previous forty-eight hours had felt longer than any I could remember. It had been nearly a decade since I’d left the Agency’s Zarqawi-hunting team. I’d spent a handful of years—just a fraction of my life—helping battle Al Qaida in Iraq. Yet I remembered some of it as though it had been yesterday. And a team had just flown in from across the country to talk about what could happen tomorrow. I leaned my back against the door and sighed.

  Roger walked over to me.

  “Does this ever end?” I asked him. “Ever?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but we’ll make it work.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I closed my eyes.

  The larger perspective, of course, always comes later. These days it comes during unwelcome moments, when the brutality of war and counterterrorism fill my mind and I’m left with the shame of war and the emptiness of my own moral dissonance. What could I have done better in my own work? Why didn’t I stand up and try to stop what was happening there?

  Two years prior to the visit to our house, as I was flying home after working as a producer on a documentary about the Boston Marathon bombing, I had my first genuine panic attack. My grandmother was literally dying as I boarded the plane, and the passenger sitting next to me, an elderly gentleman, was almost exactly her age, a fact I had determined through small talk. During the flight, I turned to ask him a question about his grandchildren, but I couldn’t speak, let alone breathe. I went to the back of the plane and told the flight attendant I was either having an asthma attack or a panic attack, I wasn’t sure which. She said I was pale and should sit down. Then she quickly flung down the latch holding the jump seat against the wall and steered me toward it. After placing an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, she announced over the intercom, “Is there a doctor on this flight? If so, please come to the back of the plane.” After only a few seconds, a man knelt down next to me and introduced himself as an oncologist from Boston. He took my pulse and then asked the flight attendant to help me lie down on the floor before I passed out. I remember fading in and out, listening to the murmurings between the doctor and the flight attendant. Eventually the flight attendant was on the phone with a doctor on the ground, describing my symptoms. I immediately lifted my mask and said, “Please do not land this plane.” I was horrified and embarrassed—and besides, I was fairly sure I wasn’t dying. Turns out there were two reasons for my lack of oxygen, a newly diagnosed tree nut allergy and a panic attack on top of it.

  My mom’s husband, a Vietnam veteran, noticed the lingering aftereffects of my job at the CIA before I did. I was gradually becoming disconnected from my family and friends; my recurring anxiety and panic attacks rendered me unable to function normally. I began speaking to a therapist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve learned since then that many people who were at the CIA share a similar struggle.

  A landmark study conducted by the RAND Corporation in 2008 found that nearly one in five Iraq War veterans suffers from PTSD. In 2012, the Department of Veterans Affairs quietly released a more damning figure: nearly 30 percent of the 834,463 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans it had treated at VA hospitals since 2001 have been diagnosed with PTSD. I was also hardly alone in fearing that it represented some kind of weakness and trying to dismiss it. That same year, the nonprofit organization Blue Star Families found that only 35 percent of service members displaying symptoms of PTSD have sought treatment.

  But I wasn’t a soldier, so why I would experience PTSD? Shame began to make me feel that I was mentally weak and lacking the ability to cope with traumatic events. Turns out shame and guilt can be PTSD’s best friends. While I was employed at the CIA, PTSD was not discussed as part of our jobs; we assumed it was never going to affect us. Later, after talking to some of my colleagues, I realized that the war on terror has affected many of us.

  Within a two-year time period, I lost my grandmother, I lost my mother, and I was diagnosed with PTSD. Coping would be the only word to describe how I lived through the initial stages of hitting rock bottom. I stayed home, didn’t want to leave the house—and sometimes I couldn’t leave the house. I felt claustrophobic everywhere—outside, in a car; the feeling had no connection to the size of the space I was in. I have always loved to fly, everywhere, anytime, but at that point I could hardly stand the thought of being trapped in a metal tube. I wasn’t afraid of dying in an airplane crash: in fact the only solace I had was knowing that I could get out of an airplane after it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed.

  It has taken years of therapy and hard work to move through the anxiety, panic, and new way of living. PTSD has given me a different vision of what I want and a renewed sense of what I feel is important.

  It’s only recently that I’ve come to appreciate how serious a misnomer the word disorder is: we were all exposed to horrific things in Iraq and in the larger battle against terrorism. If we take into account the millions of refugees and those left behind who have had to experience the trauma of war, it’s a sobering reminder that war should only be a last resort.

  I know all too well that stories about counterterrorism rarely have a clean beginning or a well-defined end. Counterterrorism has had and will always have multiple fronts: extremist cells grow and divide—multiply, even—and can seemingly emerge continuously.

  Amid reports the Agency collected of a power struggle for Zarqawi’s vacant position, one shadowy figure soon emerged: Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian cohort of Zarqawi’s who had trained in al Qaida terrorist camps in Afghanistan. His brief dossier—a bit of bomb-making experience; an ability to shuttle foreign fighters across the Syrian border; a familiarity with the various extremist groups in the region—checked all the boxes required of someone leading part of a jihadist network. But the full al Qaida offshoot in Iraq? When I heard about his promotion, I scratched my head.

  In another of the remarkable twists that only become legible in hindsight, there’s likely a reason for that. I have come to believe strongly that Usama bin Ladin never intended for Masri to get the job.

  In the summer of 2006, with Zarqawi recently deceased and a restless Iraq seeming ripe for conquest, bin Ladin, I’ve long suspected, was finally in a position to handpick the leader of the then most visible al Qaida franchise in the world. For that vaunted role, I’m convinced, bin Ladin chose Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the al Qaida senior adviser who had met Zarqawi in 2003, right around the time I first set foot in Baghdad.

  Soon after Zarqawi’s death, it became clear that the Agency had done so much damage to the rat lines bringing foreign fighters into Iraq that al Qaida central started directing international recruits toward countries such as Algeria, Somalia, and Yemen. As a result, bin Ladin surely believed that al-Iraqi, who was born in northern Iraq and at one time served in the Iraqi Army, could be a galvanizing figure in an Iraq-based terror group that was becom
ing ever more dependent on local manpower. It made sense to appoint a native son to lead AQI and the aggrieved Sunnis in the midst of their civil war. Al-Iraqi was familiar with Zarqawi’s theater of war, thanks to his regular visits to Iraq; furthermore, his travels throughout the Middle East on behalf of al Qaida would have given him the connections and fund-raising acumen to steady the group. Al-Iraqi had even proved his ruthless mettle a year earlier, masterminding the July 7, 2005, attacks on London’s public transportation system, which killed fifty-two people. I’m convinced he was exactly the sort of well-connected killer bin Ladin would have chosen to officially succeed Zarqawi.

  But these were exactly the credentials that made al-Iraqi a well-known figure among targeting teams at Langley—first to the branches specifically devoted to al Qaida figures and then, once al-Iraqi made contact with Zarqawi, to my team. Al-Iraqi was arrested in the fall of 2006 as he passed through Turkey on his way to Iraq. For the second time, I’m convinced, bin Ladin’s handpicked emir for the most important wing of his global terror group had been stymied. And that moment marks the start of a thought experiment I’ve long toyed with.

  Soon after his arrest, al-Iraqi was put on a plane and began an odyssey that lasted until he was ultimately delivered to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in April of 2007. He’s still there today. Now in his midfifties, al-Iraqi faces life imprisonment for war crimes while his case winds through the military court system.

  Meanwhile, with no representative from al Qaida central to challenge him, Masri, the Egyptian, took hold of Zarqawi’s former network. Lingering bad blood remained, however, and connections between Masri’s group and bin Ladin’s network rapidly frayed. To improve its local appeal, Masri changed AQI’s name to the Islamic State of Iraq. He appointed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a like-minded local jihadist who shared the wanton lust for destruction that Zarqawi had championed, as his fellow leader of the Iraq-based organization. Together they masterminded the hell that was wrought throughout Iraq from late 2006 through 2007, including the massacres and annihilation I’m convinced bin Ladin would have fervently rejected.

  What would have happened had the United States simply not pinched al-Iraqi on his way across that Turkish border in 2006? What if al-Iraqi, bin Ladin’s handpicked successor, had assumed control of Al Qaida in Iraq? I often wonder. Would a quieter, relatively “gentler” version of AQI—as contradictory as the concept may seem—have enabled the coalition to more quickly and successfully stabilize the country? Would the existence of that devil have been preferable to what took its place?

  Of course I will never know the answer to that question. What we do know is that Masri and Omar led the organization until October of 2010, when a joint Iraqi and US SOF assault upon their meeting place west of Baghdad killed them both.

  In the greater counterterrorism arc, the thread of extremism in Iraq hardly ends there. But for a moment, soon after Masri was meeting the same fate as Zarqawi, global focus instead turned to a shabby bedroom more than one thousand miles to the east, on the outskirts of Abbottabad, Pakistan—the culmination of a hunt that truly gained steam once the CIA picked up Hassan Ghul.

  Back in 2004, Ghul, the al Qaida courier snatched en route to meet with Zarqawi, spent a few days in foreign custody before being turned over to the CIA. According to public records, during casual conversations referenced in the Senate torture report, Ghul told debriefers that bin Ladin “was likely living in [the] Peshawar area” of Pakistan. He further speculated that bin Ladin’s “security apparatus would be minimal”—perhaps only one or two bodyguards—“and that the group likely lived in a house with a family somewhere in Pakistan.” Lastly, he added, “It was well known that [bin Ladin] was always with Abu Ahmed [al-Kuwaiti].”

  That last line got everyone’s attention.

  Now, January of 2004 was not the first time the intelligence community had come across Kuwaiti’s name. A phone number for the Pakistani courier had been collected by the CIA two years earlier. An e-mail address was added six months after that. Those details appeared on the contact lists and in the address books of other high-level al Qaida operatives who were arrested. Kuwaiti was obviously someone worth knowing about within that organization, but investigators were deeply uncertain about his importance. Also, predictably, when Kuwaiti’s al Qaida contacts got arrested, the courier discontinued using the contact information the Agency monitored. Ultimately those data points, the Agency has said, were “insufficient to distinguish Kuwaiti from many other bin Laden associates until additional information from detainees put it into context and allowed CIA to better understand his true role and potential in the hunt for bin Laden.”

  That’s where Ghul came in, offering some of the most accurate detainee-related intelligence yet on Kuwaiti and his relationship to bin Ladin. In conversations with debriefers overseas, Ghul tabbed Kuwaiti as one of three individuals most likely to be found with bin Ladin, describing him as the al Qaida head’s “closest assistant,” who “likely handled all of [bin Ladin’s] needs”—including shepherding messages to and from other al Qaida contacts. That’s also when the conversations with Ghul became far less casual.

  After he was rendered and subjected to enhanced interrogations, the Agency has said that Ghul described specific instances of Kuwaiti passing along letters from bin Ladin. Ghul also refuted the accounts of other high-value detainees who’d scoffed at Kuwaiti’s importance and insisted that the courier had “retired” from al Qaida—stonewalling from the detainees that seemed, after Ghul’s admissions, to indicate they were deliberately obscuring Kuwaiti’s importance. That was a clear signal: by 2007, a CIA targeting study concluded, “these denials, combined with reporting from other detainees… add to our belief that Abu Ahmad [al-Kuwaiti] is [a high-value target] courier or facilitator.” That sort of “detailed tactical intelligence,” the Agency has said, was a “milestone in the long analytic targeting trek that led to Bin Ladin.”

  With his crucial role within al Qaida clarified, Kuwaiti became far too important to stop. His arrest might net the Agency new information or it might not—but if he could simply be monitored, an internal Agency memo from 2008 suggested, Kuwaiti might lead investigators directly to bin Ladin. The truth was that the CIA was short on any other real leads to the emir of al Qaida at the time. “Although we want to refrain from addressing endgame strategies,” the memo said, “detaining [Kuwaiti] should be a last resort, since we have had no success in eliciting actionable intelligence on bin Ladin’s location from any detainees [besides Ghul].” In 2010, a team of targeters led by Myrtle, the woman I’d worked with years earlier, built upon analysts’ efforts and made that Kuwaiti intelligence actionable.

  Kuwaiti’s location was soon traced to an unexpectedly upscale enclave in Abbottabad’s northeastern suburb, Bilal Town. Kuwaiti and his family lived in a compound worth an estimated $1 million, along with his brother and his brother’s wife and children. The compound was surrounded by walls as high as fifteen feet and topped with multiple tiers of barbed wire.

  The children only left the walled complex for school. The home had no Internet connection or phone line, and any cell-phone calls were taken well away from the property. Kuwaiti and the other residents could be seen burning their trash in the yard as opposed to simply setting it outside for community pickup.

  There were indications that a mysterious third family lived on the compound’s top floors—except those family members, it seemed, never left the house at all. That is, with one exception. Overhead surveillance routinely caught sight of an unidentified man strolling the compound’s inner courtyards. Based on shadow patterns, they estimated that he was reasonably tall and thin. Agency analysts referred to him simply as “the pacer.”

  The intelligence community kept its ears on Kuwaiti’s phone, and when the courier cryptically told an old friend during a call, “I’m with the same ones as before,” word went straight up the chain of command. On April 29, 2011, President Obama determined there was a probability that th
e unknown pacer was bin Ladin and that the United States had to act. “Look, guys, this is a flip of the coin,” he told his advisers. “I can’t base this decision on the notion that we have any greater certainty than that.” What became known as Operation Neptune Spear was a go.

  Shortly after midnight Abbottabad time on Monday morning, May 2, 2011, members of a SEAL team arrived at bin Ladin’s compound and executed those orders. The emir of al Qaida and four others were killed during the raid. When the president addressed the nation soon after, I let out a sigh of relief.

  Bin Ladin’s death didn’t cripple al Qaida, of course. The organization continues to grow and divide and reemerge in countries such as Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. And sometimes, unfortunately, I see it returning to the very same places where I once helped root it out.

  I’ve never bought the idea that the “surge” of US troops in early 2007—when President Bush authorized the deployment of thirty thousand additional forces to Iraq—was a success. Iraqi civilian casualties indeed fell throughout that year, but the exact reasons why are far more nuanced than the idea that those additional US troops saved the day—a backward-looking myth that persists to this day, as Arizona’s Republican Senator John McCain told CNN on September 11, 2014: “We had it won, thanks to the surge,” he said of the Iraq conflict. “It was won. The victory was there.”

  In reality, the nuances of what unfolded with the surge should be important to anyone trying to understand ground conditions in Iraq now, because they were not all good. Thousands of new twentysomething American soldiers were sent into neighborhoods with very little language training or cultural understanding. To help stanch the blood flow, coalition forces arrested some five thousand people during the summer of 2007. That brought the total number of detainees at the time to roughly twenty-three thousand, the highest number since the US invasion in 2003. It was a quintessential example of the way a superficial tactical advance could lead to larger strategic failure: many of the US-run facilities have had the same effect on those inmates as prison did upon Zarqawi. We know now, for instance, that as my team at Langley hunted the Jordanian, a separate key extremist was washing through US facilities in Iraq.