by Eric Maddox
“This man is known for being the very best cook of mazgoof,” Basim told me as soon as we were alone. “I have eaten his fish before. Muhammad Ibrahim uses him often to cook for his friends.”
So the fisherman knew Muhammad Ibrahim. It seemed likely that he was trying to hide that information from me by claiming to run the fish farm instead of admitting that he knew who actually owned the place. What I needed to find out now was the nature of the link between my prisoner and the man I had been chasing for so long.
I had the second fisherman brought in. Basim remained in the shadows at the back of the room. I was thankful I’d decided to bring him to Baghdad with me. He had proven his value in a dozen different ways.
Almost from the start of my interrogation, it was clear that the second fisherman had little to offer. Basim immediately signaled to me that he had no idea who the man was. But as I had already learned in Tikrit, innocent bystanders could reveal a lot if you ask them the right questions.
“How long have you been fishing with your friend?” I asked him.
“About a month,” he replied promptly. “We fish together many nights.”
“How did you meet him?”
“My brother. He said this man was looking for someone to do work for him. I needed a job.”
“What was your job?”
“Fishing.”
“Does your boss own the fish farm?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. I believed him. He wasn’t acting as if he had anything to hide. “I think it was given to him.”
“By who?”
“His cousin died last month. I think his family gave it to him then. But I don’t know for sure, mister. I just work for this man. I swear I have done nothing wrong.”
“Shut up,” I ordered him. “I’ll let you know if you’ve done something wrong.” I was thinking and I didn’t want to be interrupted. Who had recently died? Radman Ibrahim Al-Muslit, Muhammad Ibrahim’s brother, had keeled over from a heart attack while in custody in early November. But I knew the entire Al-Muslit family tree and this guy wasn’t on it. Who else? Abu Sofian, the Samarra insurgent leader and brother of Muhammad Khudayr, had been killed a month earlier by coalition forces. Was it possible that the first fisherman was related to Muhammad Khudayr?
I sent the second fisherman out of the room and ran my theory past Basim. “It is most certainly possible,” he told me.
That was all I needed to hear. I had the first fisherman, whom I now suspected was a relative of Muhammad Khudayr’s, brought back in.
I started in on him again, taking into account my new theory. My aim was to get him to admit a connection to the two Muhammads.
“How long have you lived in Samarra?” I asked.
“My whole life.”
“How long have you owned the fish farm?”
“For only a month.”
“How did you get it?”
“It was given to me by my mother’s family.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“My mother’s brother. My uncle. He is dead.”
I glared at him. “If he’s dead, how could he give you the fish farm?”
“It was his son,” he stammered. “My cousin. He is dead, too.”
I almost laughed. Did this guy hear dead people? “Listen, asshole,” I shouted. “I want the name of someone alive. Who gave you the pond?”
He was quaking now. “My cousin,” he told me at last. “He has a business partner. He gave me the pond.”
“What is your cousin’s name? The one who’s still alive.”
“Muhammad,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Muhammad what?” I demanded.
“Muhammad Khudayr.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I bent down in front of the trembling fisherman until I was inches from his face. I dropped my voice until he had to strain to hear me. “I want you to look at me and listen very carefully,” I said. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“No,” he replied. “I have done nothing.”
I shook my head. “You have done something,” I told him. “You have gotten involved with some very bad men. Do you know who those men are?”
“No.” He couldn’t look me in the eyes.
“They are your cousin Muhammad Khudayr and his business partner. Do you know the name of his business partner, the man who gave you the fish farm?” I wanted him to say it first. If I told him that I knew it was Muhammad Ibrahim, I’d be tipping my hand. He could deny it or pretend he never heard the name. I’d be chasing ghosts again. It was critical that it came directly from him.
“No,” he said. “I do not know his name.”
There was a knock at the door. Lee appeared and motioned for me to come out. I sent everyone back to their cells and joined Lee in the hallway. With him was a guy he introduced as Walt, an analyst and Kelly’s Baghdad counterpart. I’d never met him, but I knew him by name. He was the one whose tracking system couldn’t see the boat on the pond when we did the fish farm raid. Not that it mattered now. The targets I had insisted were the two Muhammads turned out to be two fishermen. But I still had no use for Walt. To me he represented another obstacle to completing the mission. I’m sure the feeling was mutual.
But my opinion was to quickly change. “Are you talking to those fishermen?” he asked in a thick southern accent after we shook hands.
I nodded. “One of them is Muhammad Khudayr’s cousin, he is more than just a fisherman.” I was curious to see if the name would mean anything to him.
It did. “Mind if I sit in on the interrogation?” he asked. He had obviously taken an interest in where this might go next. “Kelly’s been keeping me up to date on what’s happening. I know you’ve been looking for Muhammad Ibrahim and I can understand why. I think he’s the key to the whole insurgency.”
My regard for Walt suddenly shot up. “I’m glad you think so,” I said. “I get the feeling no one else around here has ever even heard of him.”
“Kelly sent everything straight to me,” Walt explained. “I’ve been keeping a pretty close eye on what you all have been doing in Tikrit.”
“I’m scheduled to ship out of here in a couple of days,” I said. “But I may still get something out of these fishermen. Especially Khudayr’s cousin.” I looked him the eye. I had nothing to lose now. “If I get a target, will you push to have it hit?”
Walt smiled. “All I can do is make a recommendation to the commander,” he replied. “But he usually goes with what I suggest. Kelly told me that if anyone could get anything out of those two fishermen, it would be you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Let’s get to work then,” I said.
Aside from his knowledge and support of the work we’d been doing in Tikrit, Walt proved his worth in another way. He was a pretty good interrogator. As soon as we brought back Muhammad Khudayr’s cousin, the two of us went at him fast and furious. It was as if Walt understood the urgency I was feeling as my final hours in Iraq ticked down. By the intensity and volume of our questioning, we made it clear to the fisherman that we were determined to get the answers we were after. When one of us slowed down, the other picked up the slack and the prisoner hardly had a chance to catch his breath.
It was still a good three hours before his story started to crack. At first, he insisted that Muhammad Khudayr was no more than a distant relation and that he had no idea who his business partner might be. I was still holding back on mentioning Muhammad Ibrahim. I wanted him to bring it up first.
But I was running out of time. I finally had no choice but to give him the name of the man I’d been desperately searching for. “Your cousin’s partner is Muhammad Ibrahim, asshole,” I shouted. “You know it and I know it. And here’s something else I know. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison for aiding and abetting a known terrorist. We tried to help you but you didn’t want our help. Now it’s too late.”
That did the trick. The fisherman started talking. In fact, once he got sta
rted, it was hard to keep up with him. “Yes, mister,” he admitted. “Now I remember. It was Muhammad Ibrahim. Ever since Muhammad Khudayr’s brother, Abu Sofian, died, they are always together.”
“Do they go to the fish farm?” Walk asked.
“Almost every day. But they never stay there.”
“Where do they stay?” I asked.
“My cousin’s house or the house Muhammad Ibrahim rented in Samarra.”
We had already been down that road. It had ended in two dry holes. “Where else?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he insisted. “They have left Samarra.”
“When?” interjected Walt.
“Four days ago,” the fisherman answered. “That was the last time I saw them.”
“Where did they go?” I pressed.
“They are always together,” the prisoner replied, trying to avoid the question.
“I didn’t ask you that, shithead,” I shouted. “I asked you where they went.”
He looked from Walt to me and back again. You could almost hear the gears turning in his head. He had reached the inevitable conclusion. There was no way out now but our way. “I swear I don’t know,” he began, and then took a deep breath. “But my cousin and I have an uncle in Baghdad. Perhaps they are there.”
“Where is your uncle’s house?” Walt asked.
The fisherman gave us the location. By now he was fully cooperative. His was the typical profile of a broken prisoner, going from evasive and defiant to ready, even anxious, to help. He had no objection when we informed him that he was going on a recon to point out the exact location of his uncle’s place.
After we sent him back to his cell, Walt and I conferred. “I think this uncle’s house is as good a target as we’re going to get,” I said.
“You think they really might be there?” Walt asked.
After everything that had gone down in the last forty-eight hours, the last thing I wanted was to make another bad call. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think it’s worth a shot.” What I didn’t say was that it was probably going to be the last shot, at least on my watch.
Walt nodded. “I’ll run this by the commander. I’m pretty sure he’ll go along with it. He’s as aggressive as they come.”
I paused, picking my next words carefully. “Thanks, Walt,” I said sincerely. “You know, I always assumed you were kind of…a dick.”
He laughed. “Same here,” he replied. “I always assumed you were trying to get Kelly on your side and discredit our input on Tikrit.”
That’s because your Tikrit intelligence was always wrong, I wanted to tell him. But I figured I’d said enough. I needed his help. Whatever was going to happen from here on out was going to happen without me. I needed someone to finish the job.
But, as it turned out, my usefulness had not quite come to an end. Later that evening, as I was winding down from the intense session with the fisherman, Lee asked me to come down with him to the flight line. A recent raid had gathered some detainees and he wanted me to help get them in-processed.
As we were standing at the runway, waiting for the choppers to set down, a full-bird colonel approached. He was on a first-name basis with Lee and after a friendly greeting I was introduced.
“Staff Sergeant Maddox,” Lee said, “this is Colonel Walker, the J-2.” That was impressive. J-2 meant that the colonel was the senior intelligence officer for the entire task force. He out-ranked every other intelligence official, analyst, and interrogator in the task force. Theoretically, Colonel Walker would have known about every information gathering operation that the task force was involved in. But it didn’t work that way. I knew from direct experience that intelligence gathered in Tikrit, for instance, pretty much stayed in Tikrit. The intent was to keep the decision making as local as possible. Kelly and other analysts elsewhere knew better than anyone what the situation was in their part of the country. They tried to keep oversight from task force headquarters to a minimum in order to avoid unnecessary interference. It was for that reason that I was not required to write lengthy reports of my work. It avoided complications.
But now that I was face-to-face with the man in charge of task force intelligence gathering, I was beginning to have second thoughts. He was obviously interested in what had been going on in Tikrit. And it was just as obvious that he was pretty far behind the curve.
“How long have you been up in Tikrit, Sergeant Maddox?” he asked me.
“Five months, sir,” I replied.
“What have you been doing there?”
“Just trying to get rid of the bad guys, sir.”
“Any luck?”
I paused. Could I even begin to explain how close we’d come? “We did all right, sir.” I answered.
“How come I haven’t seen any of your interrogation reports?” he continued.
I swallowed hard. “Sir,” I answered, “I was told not to worry about writing them up.”
“I don’t know who told you that,” he said, clearly irritated. “We need those reports. Especially after that pile of money you all found. Can you write up a quick summary of what you’ve been doing in Tikrit?”
“Certainly, sir,” I responded. “But I don’t know how clear a picture a written report might convey. It’s a complicated situation. I do have a link diagram that I can provide. And I can brief anyone who might be interested.”
“Excellent,” Colonel Walker said. “When are you shipping out?”
“Sunday the fourteenth, sir.”
“I’m having an analyst’s meeting on Thursday. I’d like you to be there. And bring your link diagram.”
The colonel left and, watching him disappear into the darkness, I turned to my friend. “Lee,” I asked, “anyone ever want to know anything about Tikrit before we found that money?”
“Eric,” he replied. “We’re in Baghdad. We stay focused on Baghdad.”
We stood in silence for a long moment. “Do you think Saddam is in Baghdad?” I finally asked.
“I have no idea,” he replied. “Why? Do you think he’s in Tikrit?”
I thought back once more on all the mistakes I had made and all the dry holes I had turned up. In spite of it all, there was a feeling I just couldn’t shake. “Yeah,” I said to Lee. “I think he is.”
I arrived at the briefing room at 1400 to find about a dozen analysts and intelligence officers slumped in their chairs waiting for me. It was clear from the moment I walked in that this was the last place they wanted to be. I was an unknown interrogator from a provincial backwater whom no one believed had any further significance in the ongoing hunt for insurgents. Everyone in that room shared the belief that whatever was happening in Iraq was happening in Baghdad. Everything else was a waste of time. If it hadn’t been for the presence of Colonel Walker in the front row, I doubt they would have bothered to show up at all.
Standing at the front of the room, I considered starting off by telling anyone who wasn’t interested that as far as I was concerned, they could take off. But I wasn’t running the show. Colonel Walker was, and he expected a full briefing with his whole staff in attendance. They were obligated to at least stay awake.
Taking a deep breath, I unveiled a blowup of the link diagram I had prepared the night before and launched into a rapid-fire summary of what I had learned over the last five months. Muhammad Haddoushi and the Al-Muslits, Radman Ibrahim and Farris Yasin, Thamir Al-Asi and Abu Drees, Basim Latif and Baby Radman. As I spoke, I thought back on each one of them. It seemed as if I had spent half a lifetime trying to get inside their heads and discover their secrets. In some ways it seemed that I knew them better than my own friends and relatives. I had matched wits with them, confronted them in a contest of wills and pushed them, and myself, to the limit. Some had broken, some hadn’t. Some had told me what I needed to know and some would go to their graves without betraying their loyalty. They were foot soldiers in a cause that a few of them were willing to die for. I couldn’t help but acknowledge that reality
, even if their cause meant the death of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. They were, in their way, dedicated men. In order to stop them I had to be just as dedicated.
I didn’t realize how deeply I had entered their world until I tried to explain it to others. I had interrogated over three hundred people during my time in Tikrit. I had put everything I discovered, along with all the conjectures I had made, onto that link diagram. I knew every person on it, and what his connection was to every other person. I knew who had given me the information that had enabled me to fill in each square on that diagram. And I knew who I had cross-checked to confirm that information. The end result wasn’t just a graph of bad guys; it was a four-dimensional map of the insurgency. I knew it like the back of my hand, like the streets of my hometown.
But even while I spoke, painstakingly reviewing the time line and the cast of characters, I couldn’t get away from the fact that they had won and I had lost. For all my determination, Saddam was still at large. The most wanted man in Iraq had eluded me and had lived to fight another day. My only hope was that the men and women in front of me would somehow continue the search and complete the mission.
It didn’t seem likely. It wasn’t just their bored expressions that made the debriefing seem so pointless. It was the fact that, in all likelihood, by the end of the week most of the information I was presenting would be forgotten or lost. Even as I left Tikrit, I had hoped that I’d somehow manage to buy the team another week or two to continue the search for Muhammad Ibrahim. They were deployed there for another month, but after they left, everything that Bam Bam, Kelly, and I had in our heads would be gone forever. That was one of the hardest parts of going home. If the mission wasn’t completed, the intelligence that someone else might be able to use to finish the job would be lost.
And that wasn’t just true for our particular situation in Tikrit either. A lot of valuable information was simply carried inside the heads of the soldiers stationed everywhere when they returned home. It was true that some commanders had made a concerted effort to preserve intelligence and pass it on. But what usually happened was that incoming case officers and analysts opted to develop their own leads and sources. Every time there was a change of personnel, it was like having to invent the wheel all over again. What had come before, no matter how valuable, was often discarded or ignored. It would be even truer in my case. Why should anyone listen to an interrogator with some dumb theories about the insurgency that he hadn’t been able to prove? Running through the link diagram, I might as well have been making it up on the spot. Of course, the $1.9 million added some credibility to what I was saying. But the bottom line was the same: Saddam was missing. And no one in that room seemed willing to follow the clues that I was laying out.
