by Eric Maddox
I had no reason to think they’d keep me. My original assignment had been for forty-eight hours and that was almost up. The only reason for me to stay on was if I proved myself useful and, so far, that hadn’t happened.
I started going over the fifteen pages of notes I’d taken during Rafi’s interrogation. I was hoping there was something I might have missed, something I could point to in the report I would write the next morning. I’d wanted to make it lengthy and detailed to demonstrate my added value to the mission. But after scanning my almost unreadable scrawl, it was depressingly clear that it could all be summed in a few sentences: Rafi Idham Ibrahim Al-Hasan Al-Tikriti is a nephew and former bodyguard of Saddam. He provided no actionable information. It was determined that he was not honest during questioning. He should not be released until hell or Tikrit freezes over. By the way, this team might need a better interrogator.
Chapter 5
THE ROUTINE
1400 31JUL2003
I wasn’t sure whether anyone noticed that I had overstayed my assignment in Tikrit, or if anyone even cared. In the days following my interrogation of Rafi, I was still hoping to convince the team to keep me around.
When I approached Rich for advice on how to extend my stay, he smiled. “So you like it out here in the shit,” he said.
He was right. I did. But it was more than that. “I like doing my job,” I replied. “And you’ve got prisoners here, lots of them.”
“Mostly we just ship them back to Baghdad.”
“I know. But they aren’t getting interrogated down there.” As I had seen during my short stay in Baghdad, detainees arriving from outside of Baghdad were being sent to the back of the line. “You’re not their top priority,” I continued. “They don’t know what to ask Tikrit prisoners, anyway. Let me stick around, Rich, and I’ll interrogate everybody you bring in. You all won’t have to depend on Baghdad. And they’ll be happy because they will have that much less to deal with.”
“How long do you want to stay?”
I shrugged. “I just started a six-month deployment.”
He gave a low whistle. “We’re only here for three. Tell you what. I’ll talk to Matt and Jack. They’ll make the call.”
I figured that talking to Rich was as good a place as any to make my case for staying in Tikrit. But Jeff saw it differently. “You run that shit by me first!” he told me angrily when I informed him that I’d approached Rich. I was quickly finding that you had to tread lightly around Jeff. He had a hair-trigger temper and it didn’t help that, like the rest of the shooters, he had no use for the intelligence personnel. I’d just gotten another lesson in the task force hierarchy. I knew my time was limited. Now I feared I had widened the hole in the hourglass.
I waited nervously to see how badly I had screwed up. But it seemed that I’d been granted a reprieve. Days went by with no one asking why I wasn’t back in Baghdad. Meanwhile, I kept interrogating the detainees that the team brought in from their frequent raids. The yield of good intelligence was low, but at least I was getting an opportunity to prove my worth.
Jeff and I did many of the interrogations together, and I gained a lot of admiration for him. He seemed to recognize what I was trying to get done, sometimes even before I did, and gave me the freedom to do it. Sometimes the shooters would drop by the guesthouse to watch me at work. Most of them got bored and drifted off after an hour or two. But Jeff would hang in, watching patiently while I developed my strategy and asking questions of his own that were right on target. We were a good team.
I was kept very busy and in the process, I established a procedure to deal with the long interrogation sessions. My off hours were spent going over my notes, absorbing what I’d learned, if anything, from each detainee. Since I didn’t really have any place I was supposed to be, I mostly hung out at the dining room table. There were occasional visitors, primarily intelligence analysts in for debriefings on the local situation. Otherwise the house was divided into rigid categories: those of us who slept downstairs and those who slept upstairs.
The shooters had a regular rhythm to their days, too, consisting of exercise, video games, weapons maintenance, and time spent at the firing range. Then came the intense energy and adrenalin of the nighttime raids.
I had my own job to do, although how I was going to get it done was an open question. When I first arrived, I spent a lot of time going over the list of bodyguards that Jared the terp had given me. Since there was no background information or rankings of importance, it was of limited use. But I did take notice of how the names were grouped into separate clans.
For instance, Nezham, the guy we had gone after my first night, was one of over thirty Al-Muslit family members on the list, all of them bodyguards. And I had learned from Rafi that anyone in the Al-Hasan tribe was related to Saddam. But names and family links were only going to get me so far. I had to connect them to faces, personalities, and possible links to the insurgency.
The next day I had a chance to interrogate the hard-drinking bodyguard I’d come to question in the first place. He was also an Al-Muslit named Adnan and he lived up to his billing. Extremely hungover, Adnan looked miserable when we arrived to pick him up from the 4th ID prison. The medics there told us to keep giving him water to make sure he didn’t dehydrate from all the alcohol he hadn’t finished sleeping off.
From the beginning Adnan proved more cooperative than Rafi, with none of the fake bowing and scraping. Even though he insisted on his total innocence, he seemed to understand that he wouldn’t be getting out of prison and back to the bottle until he told us what he knew. He admitted to being a major in the Hamaya. He also readily acknowledged that he knew Rafi, but claimed that, despite what Rafi had told us, he was not a low-level functionary, but rather an inner-circle bodyguard. It was one more indication of the deception and evasion that was standard procedure for prisoners. There were always at least three versions to any one story, if not more.
But Adnan had other information, as well. From his straightforward willingness to answer questions, I got the feeling he was telling the truth. His alcohol-addled brain didn’t seem capable of deception.
When I asked him if he knew Nezham, the target of the raid I’d gone on my first night, he freely admitted to being a distant cousin.
“Was he inner circle, too?” I asked.
He shook his head. “But his cousins were.”
“Which of Nezham’s cousins were Hamaya?” I continued, trying to remember the Al-Muslit names on the list.
Adnan considered for a moment. “Radman,” he said. “And Khalil…and Muhammad Ibrahim.”
“Where are they now?”
He shrugged. “Some of them lived in New Oja. But they are gone now.”
New Oja was an enclave especially built by Saddam for his most important relatives in Tikrit. It gave a new meaning to the term “gated community.” They had been concentrated there to be more easily watched over and couldn’t move away without the dictator’s permission. The neighborhood had been hit numerous times by U.S. forces since the invasion. It was unlikely that a High Value Target would still be there.
I was more interested in that cluster of Al-Muslit brothers who had served as bodyguards. I made a mental note of them with no idea whether I’d ever hear their names again. But I soon had another priority. A former housekeeper for Saddam had been rolled up and delivered to the guesthouse for questioning.
The guy turned out to be one of the most interesting subjects I would interrogate during my tour of duty in Iraq. It wasn’t because he had any vital information about the insurgency or the locations of HVTs. Instead, he spent hours providing us with the most minute details on the daily life of the dictator.
His name was Tashin and, as Saddam’s personal servant, his primary responsibility was serving meals. Saddam would normally eat twice a day, at two in the afternoon and seven or eight in the evening. His favorite food by far was a fish called mazgoof. Caught in the Tigris River, it was packed with salt and ro
asted over an open fire. Saddam couldn’t get enough of it. It was all more raw data for the memory banks: Saddam liked mazgoof. Maybe these bits and pieces would come in handy one day.
Eventually I was able to turn the talk about Saddam’s dining habits toward those who were in proximity to him on a daily basis. During Tashin’s interrogations, one name in particular stood out: Muhammad Haddoushi. Aside from being able to make world class mazgoof, Haddoushi was known as one of Saddam’s closest friends. In fact, he was even called “Little Saddam.” That caught my attention. For a man who seemed to trust no one outside his immediate family circle, a real friend was a rare thing. I wanted to know more about this guy.
It didn’t take long. Shortly after my session with Saddam’s servant Tashin, I sat in on an interrogation conducted by two visiting intelligence analysts, Ray and Christy. It was an opportunity for me to watch someone else in action. I was hoping to pick up some tips from professionals who, I assumed, knew more than I did. It turned out to be instructive, although not exactly the way I’d thought it would.
The detainee was a short, round-faced former bodyguard named Taha. He was obviously nervous, sweating profusely. The two analysts did nothing to set him at ease or encourage him to open up.
“We know a lot about you, Taha,” Ray began in an even, measured voice. “And you are in big trouble.”
That would not have been my approach. The point was to find out what the prisoner knew, not tell them how much you knew. From my viewpoint, Christy wasn’t helping the process by interjecting stray facts about Taha’s family connections. Her knowledge of his family tree was impressive, but I couldn’t see the point in revealing it. It was one thing for a prisoner to think that you knew every detail of his life. It was another thing to actually tell a prisoner what you knew. That would enable him to anticipate which areas he could or could not lie to you about.
It wasn’t long before the analyst’s all-knowing approach backfired. After an evasive answer from the former bodyguard, Ray accused him of being a liar. “I have told you everything,” Taha declared and turned to Christy. “Ask her. She knows all the answers already.” After that the session went downhill fast. I came to the conclusion that, when it came to interrogation techniques, I’d stick to my own approach.
After the analysts had finished, I stayed behind to ask Taha a few questions. I started with a rundown of his family and he revealed that two of his brothers, Farris and Nasir, had worked as Saddam’s bodyguards. I made a note of the names, adding them to my mental tally of Hamaya.
I focused next on Muhammad Haddoushi, the expert mazgoof cook and Saddam’s closest friend. I wanted to see if this bodyguard would confirm what Tashin, Saddam’s servant, had been telling me.
Taha not only knew exactly who Haddoushi was, he added other interesting details. Although he was not a military or government man, Haddoushi had been a major player in Tikrit before the war. He had overseen all of Saddam’s homes and palaces and had maintained a large entourage of his own trusted friends and advisers.
I wanted more names. Turning up the pressure, I asked him whom else he knew who had been connected to Haddoushi. “He had a driver whose brother was arrested,” Taha recalled. “The driver’s brother was a servant of Saddam, whose name was Tashin.”
I sat straight up. Jeff and I had previously spent hours with Saddam’s personal servant Tashin, some of it talking specifically about Haddoushi. Somehow he had neglected to provide this tidbit of information. Tashin, the servant of Saddam, had a brother who was Haddoushi’s driver. As I said earlier, it didn’t surprise or concern me when prisoners lied to me. Figuring out the information they were trying to conceal behind the lie was what mattered.
I told Jeff what I’d learned and we had Tashin brought back to the guesthouse. “Your fucking brother was Muhammad Haddoushi’s driver,” Jeff informed him. “We talked about Little Saddam for hours and you didn’t mention it?”
I sat staring at him as he progressively grew more nervous. Tashin swallowed hard. He was having trouble talking.
“Where is your brother now?” I asked.
“At home.”
“You’re going to take us to him.”
“Of course. He will be happy to help,” Tashin replied weakly.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s going to be thrilled to see us,” I said dryly.
The next night we raided the house of Tashin’s brother and picked him up. He was tall for an Iraqi, over six feet and well groomed with a neat beard and white clothing that contrasted with his dark skin. Back at the guesthouse, he seemed only too willing to tell us anything we wanted to know about the man he once worked for.
He confirmed that Muhammad Haddoushi’s nephew had been shot in the raid that had taken out Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay. Haddoushi himself had almost been killed in a raid a few days later but had managed to escape.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Maybe at one of his houses,” the driver suggested.
“How many houses does he have?”
“Eight all together. And he is building another.”
I thought for a moment. It didn’t seem likely that Haddoushi would be hiding in one of his own places. “Anywhere else he might be?” I asked. “A friend’s house, maybe?”
The driver nodded. There was one man Haddoushi was closer to than all the rest—Salam Shaban. It was one of the same names Taha had given me hours earlier.
I returned to the main house and, tracking down Rich, passed on what I had learned over the course of several interrogations. By the next morning Rich, using a military version of Google Earth called Falcon View, had located the house of Shaban on overhead imagery, based on a sketch from Tashin’s brother. The team was in the final planning stages of a hit for that evening; they would soon be launching a round up of all the Haddoushi homes the driver had identified for us as well.
I had no idea where all this was heading. But it was starting to get fun.
Chapter 6
ROUNDUP
1200 04AUG2003
The fact that I had been involved in interrogations that were about to lead to significant raids was good news. I had moved a few steps closer to proving my worth to the task force. At least I hoped so. But I still worried about being sent back to Baghdad.
I was sitting at the dining room table as usual, going over my notes, when Jeff and the team’s two senior men, Matt and Jack, sat down on either side of me. “So, Eric,” Jack asked casually, “what did they tell you back in Baghdad about how long you’d be staying up here?”
After five days of trying to prove my usefulness by keeping as busy as possible, this was the chance I’d been waiting for. Whatever the right answer was, I needed to be ready to provide it. But at the same time, I didn’t want to appear overeager. The last thing these guys wanted was eager. The one quality everyone on the task force shared was a cool, calm approach to the job at hand. On a raid, for example, too much enthusiasm could get someone killed. As an interrogator my job was to provide intelligence. The rest of the time I needed to stay out of the way.
“They didn’t say anything,” I responded. “But I think I can be of more use here than I was back at BIAP.”
“Why’s that?” Matt asked.
“I need to get my arms around something,” I told him. “That’s how I work most effectively. In Baghdad it’s hard to know what’s going on. It’s too big to really get a handle on. Every new prisoner has another story. Here in Tikrit, the pieces should be starting to connect. The city is only so big.”
They looked at each other, silently sizing up their options. “Look,” Jack said at last. “We’re going to do the Haddoushi raid in a few days. I can keep you around until then.”
In the wake of the initial series of interrogations, the size and scope of the Haddoushi raid had expanded considerably. The list of eight houses we had identified had grown to almost twenty, including the locations of various “persons of interest.”
That list had grown, too
. The night after our interrogation of Haddoushi’s driver, the task force had picked up Salam Shaban, who had been identified as one of Haddoushi’s closest friends. The raid itself couldn’t have been simpler: we drove up to his house and Adam the terp got on a bullhorn and ordered him to come out with his hands up. An elderly and well-dressed gentleman emerged a moment later and immediately volunteered to return to the compound with us. Over the next few hours Shaban told me a lot about Haddoushi. He gave us the names of a whole group of Little Saddam’s buddies who would be invited to feasts hosted by Haddoushi when Saddam was in Tikrit before the war. Haddoushi was described as friendly, outgoing, and a real party animal, providing hookers along with his famous mazgoof.
With the new names and locations, the scope of the roundup grew. The task force requested extra assistance from conventional forces of the 4th ID. The additional manpower required more planning. The details would take time to finalize.
Eventually a routine was established. I’d get up around ten A.M. and spend a few hours going over my notes or hanging out with the operators. They were always busy, repairing vehicles, working out in the gym, or making various improvements on the house. At about noon I started with my first interrogation of the day and work until about 4:30. After dinner, at around 7:30, I’d go back to the guesthouse and continue interrogating until 12:30 that night. Then I’d spend another hour analyzing what we had learned with Jeff before I went to sleep and started all over again the next morning.
One afternoon, shortly before the scheduled roundup, I was sitting in the dining room after a long day of interrogating some low-level detainees. By this time I felt comfortable enough to sample some of the food from the refrigerator. The fact that nobody called me on it seemed like an encouraging sign that, slowly but surely, I was finding my place in the house.
Then, suddenly, my position didn’t seem so secure. I looked up to see the grinning face of another interrogator, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His name was Allen and I had worked with him briefly at BIAP. What was he doing here?
