The Targeter

by Nada Bakos

  7. “get out of the way”: Nancy DeWolf Smith, “Osama’s Real Hunters,” Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2013.

  8. “rather than recruiting spies”: Nora Slatkin, “Executive Director Speech: Women in CIA,” May 15, 1996, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/1996/exdir_speech_051596.html.

  9. 1986 class-action lawsuit: John M. Broder, “CIA Will Settle Women Agents’ Bias Lawsuit,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1995.

  10. “pervasive culture of sexual discrimination”: Ibid.

  11. $940,000 in back pay and granting twenty-five retroactive promotions: Ibid.

  12. “a fantasy of a different sort”: Slatkin, “Executive Director Speech.”

  13. “male participants are more likely to take risks”: James Byrnes, David Miller, and William Schafer, “Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 3 (May 1999): 377.

  14. “may indeed lead to higher risk aversion”: Helga Fehr-Duda, Manuele de Gennaro, and Renate Schubert, “Gender, Financial Risk, and Probability Weights,” Theory and Decision 60, no. 2 (May 2006).

  15. “Armed and Dangerous”: United States Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” August 21–22, 1993, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/files/2008/03/wandering_mujahidin.pdf.

  16. “they are training new fighters”: Ibid.

  17. “That’s not real analysis”: Barbara Sude, interview conducted by Peter L. Bergen in Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden, HBO, 2013.

  18. “We are at war”: “Report Cites Warnings Before 9/11,” CNN, September 19, 2002, http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/18/intelligence.hearings/.

  19. “I want no resources or people spared in this effort”: Douglas Jehl, “’98 Terror Memo Disregarded, Report Says,” New York Times, April 15, 2004.

  20. “despite the DCI’s declaration of war”: “Full Transcript from Testimony on Attacks,” New York Times, September 18, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/politics/19INTEL-TEXT.html.

  21. “did not discharge their responsibilities… manner”: Katherine Shrader, “CIA Missed Chances to Tackle al-Qaida,” Associated Press, August 22, 2007.

  22. “we settled on the one issue”: Associated Press, “Wolfowitz Comments Revive Doubts over Iraq’s WMD,” May 30, 2003.

  23. Seventy-Fifth Exploitation Task Force: Anthony H. Cordesman, “Intelligence, Iraq, and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 26, 2004.

  24. six hundred or so people: Ibid.

  25. nineteen top suspected WMD sites: Ibid.

  26. “but we’re past that”: Barton Gellman, “Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq,” Washington Post, May 11, 2003.

  27. a new fifteen-hundred-person task force: Cordesman, “Intelligence, Iraq, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

  28. “without identifying with or acting upon them”: Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997).

  29. Camp Cropper: Human Rights Watch, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” June 2004, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/usa0604/index.htm.

  30. as many as twenty-six thousand inmates: Martin Chulov, “Largest of America’s Two Prisons in Iraq to Shut,” The Guardian, September 16, 2009.

  31. included Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash: John F. Burns, “24 Ex-Hussein Officials Freed from U.S. Custody,” New York Times, December 20, 2005.

  32. was also in a cell in Cropper: Ibid.

  33. Tariq Aziz… was there as well: Tim Arango, “Transfer of Prison in Iraq Marks Another Milestone,” New York Times, July 14, 2010.

  34. was apprehended and sent to Cropper: Martin Chulov, “‘Chemical Ali’ to Be Hanged Within Days,” The Guardian, January 17, 2010.

  35. “One day, they [will] start facing bitter facts”: Emily DePrang, “‘Baghdad Bob’ and His Ridiculous, True Predictions,” The Atlantic, March 21, 2013.

  36. then distributed among various internment facilities around the country: Abigail Hauslohner, “Prison Life Inside Baghdad’s Camp Cropper,” Time, June 12, 2008.

  37. built to house around two hundred people: Scott Higham, Josh White, and Christian Davenport, “A Prison on the Brink,” Washington Post, May 9, 2004.

  38. somewhere between five hundred and one thousand: Ibid.

  39. more than three hundred days: “Marine General: Freed Iraqis Not Rejoining Insurgency,” CNN, October 10, 2007.

  Chapter 6

  1. bored of talking about the Iraqi Intelligence Service: “Iraq’s Intelligence Services: Regime Strategic Intent—Annex B,” April 23, 2007, https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd _2004/chap1_annxB.html; “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Postwar Findings on Iraq’s WMD Program and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments,” United States Select Senate Committee on Intelligence; S Report 109-331, September 2006, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/109331.pdf; “Support to Operation Iraqi Freedom,” April 25, 2007, https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/archived-reports-1/Ann_Rpt_2003/iraq.html.

  2. Sayf al-Adl: Ari R. Weisfuse, “The Last Hope for the al-Qa‘ida Old Guard? A Profile of Saif al-‘Adl,” CTC Sentinel 9, no. 3 (March 2016).

  3. his main al Qaida contact in Iran: Robert Windrem, “Newly Released Bin Laden Document Describes Iran, Al Qaeda Link,” NBC News, November 1, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/newly-released-bin-laden-document-describes-iran-al-qaeda-link-n816681; Weisfuse, “The Last Hope for the al-Qa‘ida Old Guard?”

  4. other foreign fighters would join his ranks: Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach, Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda (New York: Public Affairs, 2012).

  5. “but not introduce it into politics”: Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (New York: Grove Press, 1991).

  6. killed more than a million people: Ian Black, “Iran and Iraq Remember War That Cost More Than a Million Lives,” The Guardian, September 23, 2010.

  7. Hussein opened an Islamic university: Michael Slackman, “Hussein Putting His Mark on Islamic Faith,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2001.

  8. He introduced compulsory religious education: Paul Lewis, “Iraq Bans Public Use of Alcohol,” New York Times, August 21, 1994.

  9. He shuttered nightclubs with seedy reputations: Ibid.

  10. import ten million copies of the Koran: Ibid.

  11. “If we could ban it, we would. We can’t”: Slackman, “Hussein Putting His Mark.”

  12. he banned alcohol from restaurants: Lewis, “Iraq Bans Public Use.”

  13. Hussein added the words Allahu akbar… to the Iraqi flag: Ibid.

  14. Named the Mother of All Battles: Philip Smucker, “Iraq Builds ‘Mother of All Battles’ Mosque in Praise of Saddam,” The Telegraph, July 29, 2001.

  15. pints of Hussein’s blood: Martin Chulov, “Qur’an Etched in Saddam Hussein’s Blood Poses Dilemma for Iraq Leaders,” The Guardian, December 19, 2010.

  16. a slow but steady increase in violence: Michael J. Boyle, Violence After War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).

  17. killed a smattering of foot soldiers: “U.S. Missiles Hit Islamist Strongholds in Northern Iraq,” Fox News, March 22, 2003.

  18. described some methods as outright torture: Siobhan Gorman, Devlin Barrett, Felicia Schwartz, and Dion Nissenbaum, “Senate Report Calls CIA Interrogation Tactics Ineffective,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2014.

  19. Evil Hagrid: Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009).

  20. twenty-four different directorates: “Iraq’s Intelligence Services,” in Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction 1, annex B (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence
Agency, 2004), https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1_annxB.html.

  21. each designated with an M: Ibid.

  22. Another nine smaller regional offices: Ibid.

  Chapter 7

  1. killed each day: iCasualties.org, “Iraq Coalition Casualties: Fatalities by Year and Month,” http://icasualties.org/App/NewsArchive.

  2. Phase 0: Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Operation Planning,” Joint Publication 5-0, Defense Technical Information Center, August 11, 2011, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp5_0.pdf.

  3. Phase I: Ibid.

  4. Phase II: Ibid.

  5. Phase III: Ibid.

  6. CPA Order Number 1: L. Paul Bremer III, “Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 1: De-Ba‘athification of Iraqi Society,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, May 16, 2003, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB418/docs/9a%20-%20Coalition%20Provisional%20Authority%20Order%20No%201%20-%205-16-03.pdf.

  7. “future employment in the public sector”: Ibid.

  8. Doug Feith was the architect of this plan: James P. Pfiffner, “US Blunders in Iraq: De-Baathification and Disbanding the Army,” Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 1 (February 2010): 76–85.

  9. roughly eighty-five thousand government workers: Ibid.

  10. “no… Principals meeting to debate the move”: George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

  11. “true believers” in Hussein’s regime: L. Paul Bremer III, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

  12. CPA Order Number 2: L. Paul Bremer III, “Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2: Dissolution of Entities,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, May 23, 2003, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB418/docs/9b%20-%20Coali tion%20Provisional%20Authority%20Order%20No%202%20-%208-23-03.pdf.

  13. 385,000 former Iraqi soldiers: Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).

  14. 285,000 workers from the Ministry of Interior: Ibid.

  15. 50,000 guards from Hussein’s presidential security units: Ibid.

  16. “away from work and looking for employment”: Human Rights Watch, “Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad,” July 2003, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/index.htm.

  17. focused on searching out figures: Barton Gellman, “Covert Unit Hunted for Iraqi Arms,” Washington Post, June 13, 2003.

  18. “So it’s hard”: “Rumsfeld Denies U.S. Acting Unilaterally on Iraq,” Defense Department transcript of interview on CNBC’s Capital Report, March 6, 2003.

  19. first established in 1980: Dana Priest and William Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (New York: Little, Brown, 2011).

  20. OODA loop: David K. Williams, “What a Fighter Pilot Knows About Business: The OODA Loop,” Forbes, February 19, 2013.

  21. a former air force pilot: Ibid.

  22. during the Korean War: Ibid.

  23. observe-orient-decide-act planning process: Paul Tremblay Jr., “Shaping and Adapting: Unlocking the Power of Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop,” master’s thesis, United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University, April 22, 2015.

  24. shaping the environment rather than adapting to it: Ibid.

  25. hardwired to the bombs: Noah Shachtman, “The Secret History of Iraq’s Invisible War,” Wired, June 14, 2011.

  26. fight at the roadside: Rick Atkinson, “‘The Single Most Effective Weapon Against Our Deployed Forces,’” Washington Post, September 30, 2007.

  27. a half mile away: Manuel Valdes, “Even at Home, Soldier ‘Still Looking for IEDs,’” Seattle Times, October 28, 2006.

  28. garage door openers: STRATFOR Global Intelligence, “The Pros and Cons of IED Electronic Countermeasures,” December 24, 2004, https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/pros-and-cons-ied-electronic-countermeasures.

  29. wireless doorbells: Adam Higginbotham, “U.S. Military Learns to Fight Deadliest Weapons,” Wired, July 28, 2010.

  30. remote-controlled toy car controllers: STRATFOR, “The Pros and Cons.”

  31. kill thousands of Americans: William R. Levesque, “IEDs Continue to Kill and Maim U.S. Troops Despite Multibillion Dollar Effort,” Tampa Bay Times, September 27, 2012.

  32. billions of US dollars: Alex Rogers, “The MRAP: Brilliant Buy, or Billions Wasted?” Time, October 2, 2012.

  33. before the devices are even built: Atkinson, “‘The Single Most Effective Weapon.’”

  34. Hussein’s former interrogation chamber: Ibid.

  35. it was purgatory: Michael Bronner, “Hussam Mohammed Amin: Former Iraqi Weapons Monitor Describes U.S. Abuse for First Time,” Huffington Post, November 4, 2009.

  36. “enabled the British government”: Ian Cobain, “Camp Nama: British Personnel Reveal Horrors of Secret US Base in Baghdad,” The Guardian, April 1, 2013.

  37. “Fear Up Harsh,” “Fear Up Mild,” and “Pride and Ego Up”: Josh White, “Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs,” Washington Post, August 3, 2005.

  38. the Soviet Union and other Cold War enemies of the United States: Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian, Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq (New York: New American Library, 2007).

  39. dietary manipulation: Carla Anne Robbins, Greg Jaffe, and David S. Cloud, “Interrogation Rules Were Issued Before Iraq Abuses,” Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2004.

  40. the use of muzzled dogs: Ibid.

  41. sleep adjustment, and sensory deprivation: Ibid.

  42. “some kind of special metal stick”: Bronner, “Hussam Mohammed Amin.”

  43. gashes in his face that required stitches: Ibid.

  44. including those sent by the… Red Cross: Ibid.

  45. “and distribute relief supplies”: American Red Cross, “Summary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Their Additional Protocols,” January 2013, https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/PDF_s/Interna tional_Services/International_Humanitarian_Law/IHL_Summary GenevaConv.pdf

  46. trove of Iraqi government documents had been uncovered: Con Coughlin, “Terrorist Behind September 11 Strike Was Trained by Saddam,” Sunday Telegraph, December 14, 2003.

  47. “the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service”: Ibid.

  48. The paper was dated July 1, 2001: Ibid.

  49. Atta “displayed extraordinary effort”: Ibid.

  50. “the targets that we have agreed to destroy”: Ibid.

  51. compiled detailed records of airline travel: Michael Isikoff, “Terror Watch: Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam,” Newsweek, December 16, 2003.

  52. ATM withdrawals: Ibid.

  53. cell-phone usage: Ibid.

  54. hotel stays: Ibid.

  55. “conducted extensive travel”: Ibid.

  56. the FBI recorded Atta flying from Fort Lauderdale to Boston: Ibid.

  57. landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m.: Ibid.

  58. he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office: Ibid.

  59. an Internet café called the Cyber Zone: Ibid.

  60. EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard: Ibid.

  61. he boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich: Ibid.

  62. He returned to the United States on July 19, 2001: Ibid.

  63. some 120 men and women strong: “Global Forensic Services, LLC,” ExpertPages.com, http://expertpages.com/details.php/4092_4207_319 _121.htm.

  64. More than 8,500 samples of ink: Gerald M. LaPorte, Marlo D. Arredondo, Tyra S. McConnell, Joseph C. Stephens, Antonio A. Cantu, and Douglas K. Shaffer, “An Evaluation of Matching Unknown Writing Inks with the United States International Ink Library,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 51, no. 3 (May 2006): 689–92.

  65. since the 1920s: Ibid.

  66. Whatman filter paper: James M. Egan, Kristin A. Hagan, and Ja
son D. Brewer, “Forensic Analysis of Black Ballpoint Pen Inks Using Capillary Electrophoresis,” Forensic Science Communications 7, no. 3 (July 2005).

  67. the largest ink library in the world: LaPorte et al., “An Evaluation of Matching Unknown Writing Inks.”

  68. “remain unidentified”: John Conyers, Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).

  69. “is absurd”: “White House Responds to Suskind Charges,” NBC News, August 5, 2008.

  Chapter 8

  1. HCS-5… was also based at the airport: Jennifer Franco, “HCS-5 Earns Navy Unit Commendation,” US Navy press release, March 30, 2006.

  2. “introduction… or consumption”: “General Order Number 1B (GO-1B),” United States Central Command, http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/OLH_2015_Ch22.pdf.

  3. hundreds of individual “bomblets” packed inside a rocket: Paul Wiseman, “Cluster Bombs Kill in Iraq, Even After Shooting Ends,” USA Today, December 16, 2003.

  4. The 1.5 million or so bomblets: Michael M. Phillips and Greg Jaffe, “Pentagon Rethinks Use of Cluster Bombs,” Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2003.

  5. 5 to 15 percent of the bomblets… fail to detonate: Ibid.

  6. Office of Transnational Issues: “‘Think Ahead’—Directorate of Intelligence,” August 28, 2008, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2008-featured-story-archive/think-ahead-directorate-of-intelligence.html; “Careers & Internships: Economic Analyst,” August 6, 2018, https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/analytical/economic-analyst.html.

  7. 76 percent of Americans in Iraq: Shannon D. Putnam, John W. Sanders, Robert W. Frenck, Marshall Monteville, Mark S. Riddle, David M. Rockabrand, Trueman W. Sharp, Carla Frankart, and David R. Tribble, “Self-Reported Description of Diarrhea Among Military Populations in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom,” Journal of Travel Medicine 13, no. 2 (March 2006): 92–99.

  8. more than one million workdays were lost: Kathleen Miller, “Million Days Lost to Diarrhea Spur Military’s Cure Search,” Bloomberg Business, December 4, 2012.