The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  “From what I’ve heard, there’s also a problem with Russian and criminal gangs?”

  “The Russian mafia is especially influential, and other criminal gangs are trying to take advantage of the lawlessness here.”

  The U.S. Embassy in Albania was closed following the uncovering of a plot by EIJ to bomb the building, and all nonessential personnel had been sent back to the United States. The embassy was deserted except for the U.S. ambassador, security personnel, and a few other officials. The CIA [1 word redacted] had moved to a remote covert location. We checked in with them, and the chief [3 words redacted] briefed me on the operations the organization was running and the missions they needed my support on.

  “Who else is here besides you working on this?” I asked.

  “There’s only a few of us [2 words redacted] here, so we’re spread pretty thin. We get others in to help, but they’re in for short stints, so we lack the continuity I would ideally want.”

  At a local hotel, all of us had rooms on the same floor, and I went upstairs around midnight, exhausted from traveling. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. At around 3:00 AM I was awakened by gunfire. I recognized the sound of AK-47s being fired and rolled off the bed, grabbing my gun from my bedside table. I crouched on the floor, trying to get a sense of where the gunfire was coming from.

  I opened my door and went into the corridor. Other U.S. personnel had already gathered. “What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Don’t worry,” an officer told me. From his tone I guessed that he had been in the country for a while. “The presidential palace is not far from here, and often at night stray dogs run in packs on the grounds there. The guards fire rounds from their machine guns to scare the dogs off. Go get some sleep.”

  I spent the next few weeks working with the [1 word redacted] CIA officers on identifying terrorists, gathering intelligence, and disrupting threats. The [1 word redacted] and his men treated me like one of their team, and we developed a good relationship. It helped that we were a small group, which encourages closeness. Operating under a threat also brings people together. We knew Iranian agents were monitoring us, as were al-Qaeda and EIJ members—all of whom had reason not to want us in the country. We always had to be vigilant and rely on each other for backup.

  Sometimes the best of precautions were frustrated by the fact that we were in Albania, which was very backward in those years. One evening I went out to eat with two CIA officers, both temporarily assigned [4 words redacted]. When we returned to our car, it wouldn’t start. The battery had died.

  It was late, the electricity had been cut off, and the neighborhood was deserted—we had been the only patrons in the restaurant. We had no choice but to push the car to try to restart it. One guy sat behind the wheel, and the other guy and I pushed the car.

  “Ahh,” the guy with me yelled, and then I didn’t see him anymore.

  I shouted his name and heard a muffled response: “I’m down here.” He had fallen into an uncovered manhole in the road. Realizing it was nothing serious, we started laughing, and helped him out of the hole. We could not stop laughing. Finally we were able to restart the car, and hours later we got back to the hotel, exhausted and covered in dirt but happy to have arrived safely.

  [141 words redacted]

  As a result, the prosecutors declined to bring cases against a few of the EIJ operatives, including Hani al-Sibai. As of this writing, Sibai is still living freely as a political refugee in London, where he runs an Islamic organization. The Egyptians, however, using the evidence we collected, convicted him in absentia of being a member of EIJ’s shura council and of involvement in terrorist acts.

  There were also several EIJ members who were able to escape from the country and thereby from the investigation into the East African embassy bombings. For instance, we discovered that an operative who used the alias Abdul Rahman al-Masri and who had connections to Yemen had found his way to Italy, where he was staying with Sibai’s brother-in-law in Turin. Because of the alias, we thought at first that he might be the bomb maker Abu Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir, and that he had helped build the bombs detonated in 1998. We knew that Muhajir used a fake Yemeni passport and was Egyptian.

  I traveled to Italy, along with other FBI agents and assistant U.S. attorney Pat Fitzgerald, to determine if Muhajir and Abdul Rahman al-Masri were indeed the same person. We were assisted in Turin by members of the Italian Division of General Investigations and Special Operations, or Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali (DIGOS). The team was headed by Giuseppe Petronzi, from the counterterrorism department. The Turin police arrested the individual; however, upon questioning we found that he wasn’t Muhajir but another EIJ operative from Albania (with the same alias). We found weapons and wigs where he was staying, along with correspondence between him and Hani al-Sibai in which Sibai, working from London, had tried to arrange fake passports. While we hadn’t found Muhajir, we had broken up an EIJ plot in Italy.

  The challenge in working with the Italians was one of language. Although much later in the process we worked with Massimo De Benedittis, a DIGOS officer who was fluent in English (and whose nickname was “Kaiser”—all Italian officers in the division had what they called “war names”), when we first arrived not a single officer spoke English fluently, and none of us spoke Italian. The FBI representative who spoke Italian, and who would normally have handled the assignment, was out of the country on personal matters. We communicated through an interpreter who spoke Italian and Arabic. She translated from Italian to Arabic, and I then translated from Arabic to English for my colleagues.

  During one conversation, in broken English, Petronzi kept referring to “Louis.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Louis, Louis,” he said, pointing at the suspect. The suspect wasn’t named Louis, so I thought perhaps there was someone else involved whom we didn’t know about. If not that, I jokingly speculated, he might be talking about Louis Freeh, the director the FBI.

  Eventually, through the translator, I discovered that he wasn’t saying the name Louis but lui, the word for “him.” This became a running joke between Petronzi and us—happily, he always saw the funny side of things. We became good friends with him and Kaiser and other members of their team, and their assistance and hospitality created a lasting bond between us.

  While we were tracing leads and striving to disrupt possible threats by al-Qaeda, other agents and analysts from I-49 were also tracking terrorists connected to the East African embassy bombings. Their efforts uncovered Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Ruqai’i—the real name of Anas al-Liby, the Libyan al-Qaeda member who had cased the Nairobi embassy with Ali Mohamed. He was found to be residing in Manchester, England.

  John O’Neill assembled a team to accompany him to the UK. We were met in London by SO13 detectives, and together we boarded a train to Manchester. There we were met by local police detectives assigned to assist us, and John asked me to brief the team on Liby. “Anas al-Liby is a senior al-Qaeda operative,” I told them. “He’s a computer expert and was part of the team that did surveillance on the embassy in Nairobi. This is potentially a big win for us.”

  “What are we looking for?” a detective asked.

  “We’re looking for any notes, pictures, or documents, anything related to al-Qaeda, the embassy bombings, or the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which he’s also a member of, as well as being a member of al-Qaeda. We need to find in his possession evidence linking him to the bombings, or we won’t be able to hold him.”

  Liby’s location was raided, and he was caught before he could escape. He was brought down to the police station for preliminary questioning, and in the meantime his property was searched and all potential evidence was brought into the office. In his interview with the British police he didn’t cooperate and denied involvement in terrorism.

  As the detectives searched through Liby’s computer files and possessions, it soon became apparent that in thi
s case, unlike raids on other operatives, there was no “smoking gun” evidence that would tie Liby to the attacks and allow us to hold him. He was one of the more intelligent al-Qaeda operatives and had closely observed how we’d arrested other operatives: beyond going into hiding, he had destroyed as much evidence as he could. His computer hard drive had been cleared, and no incriminating files were found.

  “Sorry, we’re going to have to release him,” a Manchester police detective told us. “Under British law we can’t continue holding him just on suspicion. We need concrete evidence. And in his interview he denied everything.”

  “But if you release him, you can be certain he’ll skip town before we have time to sort through all the evidence and find something—which I’m sure is there,” John said.

  “Sorry, it’s British law.”

  Liby was released and evaded the team that was sent to follow him. We didn’t know where he had disappeared to, but we were pretty certain he was on his way to Afghanistan. While he fled, our British partners gave us access to all evidence recovered from his residence. We searched through his computer files and other property, consoling ourselves with the thought that, though we had lost the man, we would find something of use against al-Qaeda.

  Searching through one pile of files, documents, and books in Arabic, I saw what looked like a log or journal. I pulled it out from the pile and flicked through; it was full of photocopied handwritten pages. I turned to the first page, and on it was a note saying: “It is forbidden to take this out of the guesthouse.” I started reading and saw that it was full of “lessons” (as the book termed it) for terrorist operatives, covering everything from “necessary qualifications” to espionage techniques, to “torture methods.” It was written by an EIJ instructor based on his experiences in Egypt fighting the Mubarak regime.

  Once I had skimmed a substantial portion of it, I told the team that it looked to be something of considerable interest.

  “What is it?” asked Jack Cloonan, the senior agent on the team.

  “It’s the training manual that operatives, I’m guessing al-Qaeda operatives, use. It lists everything from how they should conceal themselves to the importance of conducting special operations.”

  “But does that actually lead us to any terrorists?” an officer asked.

  “Not directly, but it will. This teaches us exactly how the terrorists are taught to think and prepare themselves for operations and interrogations. It offers insight into their mind-set, and behavior patterns we need to watch for. So it should help us catch them and, when we catch them, understand how to interrogate them successfully.”

  “Can you give an example of what the book says?” John asked.

  “Sure. For example, this chapter contains instructions on how covert operatives should act. They’re told not to reveal their real names, even to other members. They are told to remove anything that indicates they are Islamists. For example, beards, long shirts, copies of the Quran, or greetings such as ‘May God reward you’ are to be avoided.

  “They’re also told to avoid visiting public spaces such as libraries and mosques. They should avoid attracting any attention to themselves. It even says here that they need to be careful where they park. And they’re warned not to speak to their wives about what they’re doing.

  “Another chapter here,” I said, reading as I spoke, “is on the cell model they use, which is the cluster model—where cell members don’t know members of other cells.”

  “Why is that?” John asked.

  “It says so that if one part of the cell is caught, everyone else won’t be compromised. They don’t even know the communication methods that members of other cells use. And cell members are told not to recognize one another in public.”

  “That’s amazing,” declared an FBI colleague.

  “It is. Look at this section here on safe houses. The manual says that ground-floor facilities are preferred, as they offer more escape options. All safe houses must have contingency plans for speedy evacuation, as well as secure areas to hide documents. And anyone going into a safe house needs to have sufficient cover—so as to avoid attention. No two safe houses should be rented from the same office, or in the same area—they’re very careful.”

  “What does the section on interrogations tell them to do if caught?” John asked.

  “Hold on,” I said, and I went to that section and sped through its pages. “What’s interesting is that it warns operatives that they’ll be subjected to torture when caught. It tells them to hold off as much as they can, especially for the first forty-eight hours.”

  “Why forty-eight hours?” another colleague asked.

  “It says because that will give fellow cell members enough time to reorganize, rendering information less valuable.”

  “And it tells them to expect to be tortured?”

  “Yes, this manual is actually written warning them what would happen if the Egyptian or another Middle Eastern government arrests them. It says their sisters and mothers will be raped in front of them and they themselves will be sodomized by dogs.”

  “And they have to bear it?”

  “They’re told that their reward will come in heaven, but that they can pretend to cooperate in order to trick the interrogator.”

  “Meaning what?” John asked.

  “It says they should give information to the interrogator, so the interrogator thinks the terrorist is cooperating, but really the information he gives up isn’t valuable.”

  Later translated into English, the Manchester Manual, as it came to be known, was used by CIA contractors to justify the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) authorized by the administration of President George W. Bush. To anyone who understood the point of the manual, this is ironic, as the manual teaches terrorists to expect and endure far worse. It is no surprise that these harsh techniques failed to work.

  “Ali, I want you to head to Pakistan. We’ve got a potentially very important source who has come in, and I want you to evaluate him,” John O’Neill told me a few weeks later. It was early in 2000.

  “Sure, boss, what’s the backstory?”

  “It’s an [1 word redacted] man who approached an agent from the [4 words redacted] in [1 word redacted] saying that he had been working with [3 words redacted] in [3 words redacted] and didn’t like them, so he wanted to work with the U.S. against them.”

  “That’s pretty convenient for us,” I said.

  “You’d think, but the [8 words redacted]—the source didn’t have anything on drug trafficking, so he was out of their area of interest. But when the source met with the agency, he was told that they weren’t interested and they sent him away.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently they think he is full of it and lying, but our FBI guy there, Chris Reimann, called me to say he thinks this guy is the real deal. Go to [1 word redacted],” John continued, “and meet him and evaluate him. And if he’s credible, get information and arrange a permanent way of contacting him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One more thing. Make sure you thank him and let him know we’re appreciative.”

  Mike Dorris, who was assigned to the FBI office in Islamabad and [7 words redacted] explained the situation to me in more detail. “The CIA asked the source a series of questions about bin Laden. He didn’t know much about the main target [bin Laden], as he dealt with midlevel al-Qaeda guys, not the leadership. [11 words redacted]”

  “That’s pretty bad,” I said, shaking my head.

  “It gets worse. The source then came back to [3 words redacted], again saying he wanted to share information. The first time, the [2 words redacted] passed him to the [1 word redacted] official, who again turned him away. But the second time, thankfully, the [1 word redacted] agent included me. I realized this source could be of use, so I sent you guys a message through Chris Reimann.”

  In Pakistan the DEA agent arranged for us and another FBI agent, Jennifer Keenan, from I-49, to meet the man. W
hen the CIA got wind of the meeting, a different officer from the agency came. As we had flown all the way from New York to meet the source, the officer guessed that he was probably more valuable than his colleague had thought.

  Unlike Junior, the man didn’t know much about the top-level al-Qaeda operatives, [10 words redacted]—and other radical terrorists whom we had never heard about. [13 words redacted] It was clear he disliked al-Qaeda, both from a personal and an ideological point of view, [10 words redacted]. We tilted the questions toward what we thought would be of use, and [5 words redacted].

  “I don’t know bin Laden, [9 words redacted], you know a lot about bin Laden,” he told me during one conversation.

  [3 words redacted]

  [77 words redacted]

  I didn’t tell him that I had heard the name [1 word redacted] before. It had come up during the questioning of Owhali, the failed suicide bomber from the East African embassy bombing. Owhali had said that when he and Jihad Ali made their martyrdom videos, [37 words redacted]—and that he was someone important we should be on the lookout for.

  “Who [1 word redacted] is very valuable to bin Laden?” I later asked the source.

  [10 words redacted]

  “Who are they?”

  [137 words redacted]

  [7 words redacted]

  [10 words redacted]

  We wrote up all the information the source had given us, and it was deemed both credible and significant by FBI analysts back in the United States. We thanked the man and arranged a method to maintain contact. We also briefed the [1 word redacted] CIA [3 words redacted] on our evaluation of the information that had been supplied.

  When I returned to the United States I found that the CIA was now interested in our man. I traveled with my supervisor at the time, John Liguori, and my partner, Steve Bongardt, to Langley (CIA headquarters) to brief the agency. There we found that there was an internal CIA disagreement—between the CTC and the Near East Division—about who from their side would handle him. [15 words redacted]