The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I should tell you that I just came from a trip overseas, and in many countries, when we landed, the foreign services would ask me, ‘How is Ali doing?’ I’ve heard a lot of great things about you, so I’m very happy to meet you.”

  “That’s a great honor, sir. Thank you.”

  We continued on to the FBI house at Gitmo, where all our agents worked and lived, and gathered in the living room, where several rows of folding chairs had been set up. Matt, the CIA chief of base, was also invited to come, and he and I stood at the back of the room. No one sat in the front two rows, and as the director was about to begin his talk, he asked, “No one wants to sit in the front?” There was silence. “Where’s Ali?” he asked, looking around, and when he spotted me at the back he beckoned me to the front: “Come sit here.” I guessed that my name was one of the few he knew.

  One evening in late June 2002, while I was working in FBI headquarters in DC—I was splitting my time between helping at Gitmo and other operations—Dan Coleman approached my desk. “Ali, do you know that there is a Salim Hamdan in Gitmo? Isn’t he Abu Jandal’s brother-in-law?”

  “Seriously? Gitmo?”

  “Yes, I’ve just been sorting through detainee files. Here’s his arrest photo,” Dan said, handing it to me.

  “So this is the famous Saqr,” I said, studying the photo.

  Abu Jandal had once told us that he only knew Saqr by his alias. “Come on,” I had told him, “are you really going to claim you don’t know your own brother-in-law’s real name?” Abu Jandal had blushed, caught in a lie. He had no idea how we knew of their relationship.

  “It’s Salim Hamdan,” he’d said.

  I went to see Pat D’Amuro and explained what I’d just learned, and we agreed that I would go interview Hamdan. At the time, there was no “fly team” (a specialized rapid response team) set up to interrogate new detainees, so Pat let me take whoever I wanted. I chose George Crouch, who had worked with me on the Cole investigation and was at the time temporarily assigned with me to headquarters. We sent word in advance to the FBI base at Gitmo that we were coming to interview Hamdan.

  Bill Corbett, the Gitmo case agent at the time, met us when we landed. “I know it’s late,” I told him, “but we want to go straight to interview Hamdan.”

  “There’s a problem,” he said. “The CIA have suddenly decided to interrogate him right now.”

  “What suddenly pricked their interest?”

  “I know,” Bill replied, “there’s something strange going on. Hamdan has been in custody for months, and the CIA has had plenty of time to interrogate him, but only now, when they heard that the FBI specifically asked to interview him and that HQ was sending you to the island, did they say they wanted to speak to him.”

  “Let’s go to Hamdan anyway,” I said. “I want to see what’s going on.”

  We went straight to the interrogation room and asked the CIA interrogators inside to come out. One was a good friend whom I had worked alongside in the past, and we exchanged pleasantries. “Listen,” I told him, “we’ve flown all the way from Washington to speak to Hamdan. We can do it together if you want, but this guy is important to us.”

  He readily agreed, but his colleague, a retired CIA officer working for the agency as a contractor, objected. When he wouldn’t listen to reasoning, we took the matter to Matt, the CIA chief [2 words redacted]. We explained the situation and why we wanted to speak to Hamdan, and he sided with us and offered to help however he could. The CIA contractor argued back, but Matt had seniority.

  “This is becoming a bad pattern with the CIA,” George said to me, as we walked from Matt’s office to the interrogation room. He had recently interviewed Abu Zubaydah’s partner Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby. Liby had been captured by Pakistani officials toward the end of November 2001 while trying to flee Afghanistan. He was handed over to the U.S. military and taken to Bagram Airfield, in Afghanistan’s Parvan province. George and another of our team members, Russell Fincher, interrogated him in multiple sessions, and Liby cooperated, giving intelligence that included details of a threat against the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. [13 words redacted]

  During one session, Fred, the CIA officer who had caused problems in Jordan during the millennium investigation and had sent the faulty cables that had to be withdrawn, stormed into the room and began shouting at Liby, working hard [13 words redacted] “I don’t care what you’ve said about plots in Yemen. I want to know about plots [2 words redacted].”

  George and Russell couldn’t believe it. Did Fred really think that thwarting attacks against the U.S. Embassy wasn’t important? Why was he disrupting the interrogation? Liby’s face also registered confusion. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking to George for guidance.

  “If you don’t tell me about what you are planning [2 words redacted],” Fred told Liby, “I’m going to bring your mother here and fuck her in front of you.”

  This was too much for Liby, and he turned away and refused to say another word to anyone. He was the internal emir of Khaldan and, in his mind, an important person; he wasn’t going to take such abuse. The interrogation stopped for the day.

  The general in charge of Bagram was furious when he heard what had happened and banned Fred from the airfield. Fred, however, filed his own report, and shortly afterwards, the CIA secretly came and rendered Liby to a third country (the name is still classified). There, after being tortured, he described the “links” between al-Qaeda and Saddam, which was a complete fabrication.

  According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on prewar intelligence on Iraq: “Postwar findings support the . . . February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa’ida associates with chemical and biological weapons . . . training in 2000. . . . Al-Liby told debriefers that he fabricated information while in U.S. custody to receive better treatment and in response to threats of being transferred to a foreign intelligence service which he believed would torture him. . . . He said that later, while he was being debriefed . . . he fabricated more information in response to physical abuse and threats of torture.”

  Later, Liby was sent to Libya, where he died under suspicious circumstances. According to reports, he hanged himself. In some countries, it’s not uncommon for prisoners to “commit suicide” in suspicious circumstances. One prisoner I heard about allegedly did so by shooting himself in the back of the head . . . three times. We have already seen how the Bush administration, unsatisfied with an initial FBI report showing no links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, asked for a rewrite, a request that senior FBI official Andy Arena refused.

  George wasn’t the only FBI agent who had bad experiences with Fred. I’d had my own with him in Jordan, of course, and saw him during the interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and [9 words redacted]. The 2004 CIA inspector general’s report by Helgerson also mentions mistakes Fred made.

  “You cannot make that stuff up,” I told George. “Thank God we have someone like Matt here.”

  Hamdan had a scowl on his face when we walked in; he glared at us as I began introducing myself. “This is my colleague George Crouch,” I continued. “We’re both from the FBI, and we’ve come to talk to you. You’ve been on our radar for a long time. I know your family. I know your position. I know the truth about who you are.”

  “Good for you,” he sneered. “I have nothing to say to you. Everything I have said and will say is in my file. Go read it.”

  “I have no interest in your file. I’m here for something different.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t trust any of you. All of you are liars.”

  “You haven’t dealt with me before, and I don’t know who said what to you, but tell me, what are the lies?”

  “I was repeatedly promised that I could call my wife to check that she was okay, but the promise was never kept.”

  “We’re different,” I told him, �
��but I won’t speak to you tonight because you’re clearly angry. So rest and we’ll speak tomorrow. In the meantime, pray and do istikhara”—a term referring to asking God for guidance—“because what I know about you, your family, and your role in al-Qaeda will really shock you.”

  “How do you know things?” he asked, clearly curious.

  “Let’s just say Abu Jandal and I became good friends.” He looked puzzled. “Maybe you don’t believe me?” He shook his head. “Well, maybe all of us are liars, but do you remember when Habib was born?” I went on to remind him of the story of Abu Jandal’s son’s birth, and of how proud he was that Habib had tasted dates from bin Laden’s mouth even before the infant tasted his own mother’s milk. Hamdan didn’t say anything but looked at me with his eyes wide open.

  “Who else but a good friend would know this story?” I asked him. “We’ll meet tomorrow, my friend. Good night.”

  “So, how did it go with Hamdan?” Matt asked as we walked into his office. We recounted the exchange.

  “So he claims he’s been lied to, and that appears to be hindering his cooperation. Is that true?”

  “Let me check,” Matt replied, and he pulled out the file. “Seems he’s telling the truth. He was promised a few times that he’d be given a phone call, but that didn’t happen.”

  “How about we let him have the phone call?”

  “What good will that do?”

  “He’ll be less agitated and more likely to cooperate, for a start, and we can use that as leverage against him.”

  “Sounds like a good idea, worth a try. Go do it. Here’s a satellite phone to use,” Matt said, handing us one of the agency’s phones.

  Early the next morning George and I met Hamdan in an interrogation room. I instructed the guard to remove the shackles from Hamdan’s arms and legs.

  “Before we start, I want to tell you something: I checked whether you were promised a phone call, and I found that it’s true. I am embarrassed that my colleagues didn’t keep their promise. George and I always keep our promises. Even though you may not believe me, and even though you know from our conversation last night that we know everything about you and what you’ve done for al-Qaeda, a promise is still a promise, so let’s go.”

  “What?” Hamdan asked, looking unsure if he understood me.

  “Don’t you want to make a phone call?” I asked. He nodded and started shaking.

  We took him outside the cell to an area where phone service was available and gave him the phone to dial his wife. When she answered and he heard her voice, he started weeping. He told her briefly that he was okay, and asked how she and their children were doing. They spoke for a few minutes. We then ended the phone call and Hamdan fell on his knees and performed the sejud, kneeling in prayer, thanking God for the phone call. He was still crying.

  We took him back to the interrogation room. For about fifteen minutes no one said anything. He just stared to the side, visibly shaking. I didn’t say anything, not wanting him to think that we were taking advantage of his emotions. I poured him some water, which he drank.

  “Thank you for the call,” he finally said, with tears in his eyes.

  “A promise is a promise.”

  “How is Abu Jandal doing?” Hamdan asked.

  “He’s good,” I told him, “and he definitely helped himself by cooperating, as I’m sure you’re now fully aware.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you everything you need.”

  True to his word, Hamdan began to cooperate fully. We started off by talking about his childhood in Al-Therba, Yemen, where his father kept a grocery store. When Hamdan was about nineteen, his father died. An unsuccessful effort to take over the store was followed by the death of his mother. Hamdan moved to Sanaa, where he met Muhannad bin Attash at a mosque. Muhannad convinced him to go to Afghanistan and join what later became known as the Northern Group. When the members of the Northern Group met bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader said to Hamdan, “You are from the Hadramout region of Yemen.” Suitably impressed, Hamdan accepted an offer from bin Laden to serve as a driver.

  For about six months he drove a truck hauling building materials for al-Qaeda’s new compound. “This was a test for me,” Hamdan told us. “They wanted to see whether I was committed and trustworthy. I was a hard worker, and after six months they appointed me as a driver for bin Laden’s convoy.”

  “Who was the main driver?” I asked.

  “At this point Saif al-Adel would drive bin Laden, and if he wasn’t driving, it would be Muhannad bin Attash or someone else who had been with bin Laden for a long time. I drove one of the other cars in the convoy.” Bin Laden paid him between two hundred and three hundred dollars a month and also covered his rent.

  “When did you first drive bin Laden?”

  “I was on the front, fighting the Northern Alliance, but they had the upper hand and were overrunning our lines. Saif al-Adel ran up to me and said that he didn’t want bin Laden at the front anymore—it was too dangerous. Saif said that he had to stay and fight, so I should drive bin Laden to safety. Which I did.”

  “What was that battle?”

  “I’m not sure, but Muhannad bin Attash was killed, and Khallad lost one of his legs.”

  Over the next days and weeks, Hamdan told us everything he knew. We’d bring him fish sandwiches from McDonald’s, which he loved, and car and truck magazines, and he’d give us information about al-Qaeda. It became clear to us that Hamdan would be a great witness in trials prosecuting other al-Qaeda members. He had been present at many key moments in al-Qaeda’s history, and while driving bin Laden he had overheard many details of plots. He had been with bin Laden, for example, when the al-Qaeda leader had released his 1998 fatwa, and he was present when bin Laden gave his press conference following the ABC interview. “And that’s when I first met Zawahiri,” Hamdan told us.

  “Did you like him?”

  “My first impression was very positive. He was very friendly. Later I saw the problems with the Egyptians running al-Qaeda.”

  Hamdan told us that he was present at al-Farouq when it was announced that al-Qaeda and Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad would formally merge. He was present when various al-Qaeda plots were discussed, and he detailed what he knew about those involved—as, for example, when Abu Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir, al-Qaeda’s chief explosives expert, explained to him exactly how the 1998 East African truck bombs worked.

  He was also present when Abu Hafs al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s military commander, and bin Laden discussed making a video about the USS Cole attack. Nashiri himself had told Hamdan during a private conversation that he was the mastermind of the attack. We talked about al-Qaeda’s structure and the process by which the leadership selected people for different missions. Abu Mohammed al-Masri, emir of al-Farouq, was “most likely to identify potential suicide bombers,” Hamdan concluded.

  Hamdan talked about how bin Laden motivated his followers and convinced them to participate in al-Qaeda operations. “After the 1998 embassy attacks and the 2000 Cole attack, there was uncontrolled passion. We were all so proud of what we had done.”

  “You didn’t think about the innocent people being killed?”

  “You need to understand that while you are in al-Qaeda’s midst, it’s difficult to think clearly or objectively. Bin Laden was always encouraging us, so we felt there was no one who could stand up to us. It was difficult to isolate yourself from the surroundings. There was no media, no newspapers, only what bin Laden and al-Qaeda spread around. When one is part of that home, from the inside it is very difficult to think of what is happening on the outside. If you think Pelé is the best football player of all time, it is difficult for anyone to convince you there are any better players. Even though, for sure, there are players better than him, for you, he is the best. You see only his best plays. If he has a bad one, you ignore it. That was the way bin Laden was for me. All these things are going on around you, and you just go with it.”

  I’ve seen this with many ope
ratives from different terrorist organizations: it’s difficult to get through to them while they’re operational. They’re too busy planning attacks and hiding from the authorities. The time when terrorists can be turned is either during the recruitment stage or when they’ve been caught and are in jail.

  “So what’s changed now? Why do you not feel the same toward bin Laden?” I asked.

  “My time in detention has opened my eyes to many things. I saw the technology of the Americans and was shocked to even see the military vehicles they moved in. I did not even think such vehicles and cars existed. Now I look back at my life and have regrets. At the time, it was difficult to see clearly.”

  I started working with David Kelley, from the Southern District of New York, with whom I had worked during the Cole investigation and in other cases, to come up with a plea agreement for Hamdan in exchange for pleading guilty and being a prosecution witness against other al-Qaeda members, especially all those involved with the Cole plot. One morning, I was watching CNN while getting dressed to go to the office and heard that Hamdan had been declared an “enemy combatant” by President Bush. I called Kelley immediately and asked if he’d seen the news.

  “Yes,” he replied gloomily.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll soon find out. But I don’t think it’s good.”

  What it meant was that we could no longer have access to Hamdan to ask questions about other detainees, and could no longer use him as a witness in other trials. Instead he was given lawyers who helped him mount a lengthy (and successful) legal challenge against the military legal system that the Bush administration had set up at Gitmo, eventually forcing the administration to set up a new system.

  What was most surprising to people in the FBI and Southern District about the “enemy combatant” label was that the Bush administration applied it without even consulting the primary agencies that had been putting together the Hamdan case, or the prosecutors preparing to try him. It was a move that undermined our efforts against al-Qaeda, especially at Gitmo.