The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  When I testified against Hamdan in the trial as a prosecution witness, it was the first time I had seen him since he had been declared an enemy combatant. When he had me in his line of vision across the courtroom, he placed his hand on his heart and nodded to me—a sign of respect. Hamdan was ultimately sentenced to five and a half years in prison, a term that was largely wiped out based on time he had already served in Gitmo. After a few months he was released, and on January 8, 2009, he was back in Yemen.

  During the trial, the defense criticized the government for throwing out a plea agreement whereby Hamdan would have served as a cooperating witness (and would have been sentenced to a longer prison term, as it turned out). “We hope one day the American people find out about this squandered opportunity.” It was a rare instance where the prosecution’s witness agreed with what the defense said.

  In July 2002 a routine FBI fingerprint check on a group of detainees in Gitmo found that detainee No. 63, who until then had insisted that he knew nothing about al-Qaeda and that he had been in Afghanistan pursuing his interest in falconry, had given a false name. In fact, he was Mohammed al-Qahtani, who had vowed, “I will be back” after being refused entry to the United States on August 4, 2001, in Orlando. He had landed in Florida with almost nonexistent English, a one-way ticket, and $2,800 in cash. Asked who he was meeting, he said that there was someone “upstairs”; asked for the name, Qahtani changed his story and said that no one was waiting for him.

  Now he was back, although not in the manner he probably expected. His file showed that he had been captured near the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan by Pakistani forces around December 15, 2001, and transferred to Guantánamo Bay on February 13, 2002. He was picked up with the other twenty-nine members of the group that included Abu Assim and Qosi, promptly nicknamed “the dirty thirty” by investigators for their false stories and close links to al-Qaeda leadership.

  Given this background information and the proximity to 9/11 of Qahtani’s entry attempt, we started looking for links between him and the hijackers. We found that on his landing card, he had listed a number belonging to Mustafa al-Hawsawi, KSM’s administrative assistant for the 9/11 attack. Some of the hijackers also had Hawsawi’s number on their landing forms. Next we discovered that on the day Qahtani had tried to enter the United States, between 4:30 and 8:30 PM a series of five calls were made from a pay phone in the airport to Hawsawi’s number. The calls were made using a calling card bought with lead hijacker Mohammed Atta’s credit card. Surveillance footage from the airport also revealed that at 4:18 PM a rental car used by Atta had entered the airport’s garage, leaving at 9:04.

  It seemed too big a coincidence that Atta, or someone using his card, would have been independently at the same airport making a call a few hours before Qahtani had arrived. I told a colleague to check whether the Virgin Atlantic flight that Qahtani was on had been delayed, and it turned out that it had been; it had been scheduled to land at 4:40 PM but hadn’t gotten in till a few hours later. Atta (or one of his fellow plotters) had probably called to find out where Qahtani was and what had happened to the flight.

  The evidence indicated that Qahtani was the missing fifth hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93. The other three planes each had five hijackers, while Flight 93 had four. He, and not Zacarias Moussaoui, as then attorney general John Ashcroft had been claiming, was the missing twentieth hijacker.

  We took this information to General Dunlavey and explained Qahtani’s connection to 9/11. Our team, assisted by behavioral experts, recommended that we remove him from the general Gitmo population and put him in the brig, as we had done with Abu Assim. The purpose of doing so would be to send him the message that his cover was blown and to isolate him from his support base. We also worried that if other detainees found out that we knew he was the twentieth hijacker, they might try to kill him to prevent him from giving us information about the plot. He was transferred and I was given clearance to see him.

  “Why have I been moved?” Qahtani asked, clearly nervous as to why he had been put in the brig.

  “We know who you are,” I told him. “Your cover has been blown. We know how you tried to enter the United States in August. It’s time for you to start telling us the truth.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied angrily.

  I studied him for a few moments while letting my words sink in. He was short and skinny, and his eyes were glassy, as if there was not much there. He also was shaking and seemed afraid. It was just the two of us in the interrogation room, although other agents were watching through a video camera in another room.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go through your story, then. Why were you in Afghanistan?”

  “I was there because I like falcons and Afghanistan is great for falconry.”

  “How many times have you been to America?”

  “Never.”

  “We have the details of your attempted entry in August.”

  “Oh,” Qahtani stuttered, “that was my only time.”

  “And why were you trying to enter?”

  “I wanted to buy cars.”

  “Where from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was soon clear that Qahtani didn’t have a well-thought-out cover story. All he’d say was that he was in Afghanistan for falconry and had gone to the United States to buy “cars.” To any additional questions about the U.S. episode, he answered, “I don’t know.” When we discussed nonterrorism-related matters, I saw that he wasn’t very intelligent. I concluded that at best his intended role in 9/11 must have been as a muscle hijacker.

  “We’ll stop for now,” I told him, “but you should realize we know who you are. You can play all the games you want to, but eventually you’ll realize it’s in your interest to talk to me.”

  Before my interview with him the next day, I put pictures on the wall of al-Qaeda members I knew he’d recognize, including KSM, Mohammed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. They were all central planners of 9/11. We doctored the pictures, except the one of Atta, so that all the men appeared to be wearing orange jumpsuits, indicating that they were in our custody.

  “Do you know these people?” I asked, gesturing to the pictures as he walked in. “We’ve got all your friends in custody. That’s how we know all about you.” He froze for a moment, and his face went red, but then he shook his head and said, “I don’t know anything.”

  “I need to step out,” I told him, “but I’ll be back soon.”

  I left and went into the room where others were watching the interrogation through a video link. As we watched, Qahtani got out of his bed and slowly approached the wall where we had taped the photographs. He stared at them for a few minutes and then touched them gently, as if trying to communicate with the subjects.

  I returned to the room and found Qahtani shaking. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “I’m going on a hunger strike,” he replied. When he was among the general population, some detainees had gone on hunger strikes to protest prison conditions. He thought that it might absolve him from cooperating.

  “You are being silly,” I told him. “You can play this game if you want to, and we’ll wait for you to stop, but I’d prefer it if you just started being honest and stopped wasting both our time.” He folded his hands and wouldn’t say anything else, and he was taken to his cell.

  I went and got hummus, tabouli, and kebab and brought it to him with some pita. “Here’s food for you,” I told him. “If you want, you can eat.” I placed it in front of him and left the cell. From the room where the video cameras were, I watched him jump up and start eating the food. That was the end of his hunger strike.

  Showing a detainee that I knew all about him and that further denial was a waste of time often worked if he had initially denied his role or refused to cooperate. It took time to wear down al-Qaeda members’ resistance, because when silence didn’t deter us, they would make small talk and deny wrongdoing, hoping
to prove their “innocence” that way. That’s when we would start questioning them on small details: Why did they go to Afghanistan? How had they traveled there? Who had arranged their trip? Who had convinced them to go? How was the trip funded? How did they get the money? Who vouched for them? Who picked them up at the airport? How did they enter Afghanistan? Where did they stay in Afghanistan? Whom did they meet?

  In their minds, these were questions that weren’t directly relevant to terrorism and could fit with their cover story, but their answers would eventually trap them in a lie, and they would have to revise their story, usually so that it was closer to the truth. Even so, we wouldn’t just ask a question like “Did you meet bin Laden?” Instead, we’d tease out details. We’d ask: Who did you first meet in Afghanistan? Where did you first stay? How did you get there? Who was the driver? What route did you take? Who was in that guesthouse? Whom did you submit your passport to? Who was the emir of the guesthouse? What did you talk about? Where did you go next? When asked about specific details, it’s very hard for anyone to maintain a false cover story.

  Once the detainee named the emir, or the person who’d trained him, we’d begin to hear names we knew from past interrogations and investigations, which gave us an indication of how the detainee fit into the al-Qaeda chart. If, for example, the detainee said that his emir was Abu Musab al-Yemeni, one of the many regular instructors in al-Qaeda’s camps, it was likely that he had done only basic training. If Saif al-Adel was involved, however, he might have been used for a special operation.

  The process could take one hour or a week; each detainee was different. Eventually they’d start telling us what really happened. But to get to that point, the interrogator needs to be an expert in the subject, and you have to show you are familiar with what the detainees are talking about. You can’t stop to ask them to start spelling names of people or places, as that would make it clear that lies aren’t being picked up.

  I got to the small talk stage with Qahtani and started developing a relationship with him. We even prayed together. I then had to leave Gitmo on another mission that was viewed as a higher priority, so I handed his case back to the agents who had originally handled him.

  In my experience, people like Qahtani would only be able to tell us their specific role in a plot: how they were recruited and trained, the people they interacted with. All of which would be useful information to convict Qahtani and give us information on the plot itself, but it was unlikely to give us much information about other plots.

  When KSM was later arrested, he told interrogators that Qahtani was “an unsophisticated Bedouin,” and derided him for being unable to learn English phrases or even use e-mail. Al-Qaeda had also tried to put Qahtani through a special training course in the al-Banshiri camp, named after the al-Qaeda military leader and shura council member who had drowned in the ferry accident in Lake Victoria, but he had failed the course.

  After I had left, other FBI agents worked on Qahtani and continued to make progress. But military interrogators, backed by political appointees in Washington, wanted to get “juicy” intelligence from Qahtani. They didn’t understand that someone like Qahtani didn’t have it. They argued that the FBI had been unsuccessful and that harsher interrogation techniques were needed. If you don’t know what a detainee should know—and political appointees in Washington certainly didn’t—there is no way to know what is success and what is failure.

  While CITF and FBI members were having problems with the military command over interrogations, there was also friction within the two strands of the military—JTF 170, under General Dunlavey, and JTF 160, under General Baccus. The separation of responsibility into interrogations and base organization frustrated nonmilitary personnel at Gitmo, too, with the lack of a coherent command structure making it difficult to produce decisions. General Dunlavey felt that General Baccus was too soft on the detainees, and at one point he even asked the NCIS to investigate him for “consorting with the enemy.” General Baccus was in fact just treating the detainees as required by military rules and regulations. While I was frustrated with both the lack of organization at the base and the way detainees were being handled, I never had any problems with General Dunlavey and always found him to be receptive to suggestions.

  The complaints about the difficulty of the two command structures reached senior U.S. military leaders, and on October 9, 2002, General Baccus was relieved of his command, and JTF 160 and 170 merged. The military felt that someone else was needed to run both commands, and on November 8, 2002, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller was placed in charge of the base. A few days later, General Dunlavey left.

  General Miller was a strange choice for command of an operation whose focus was interrogating and sorting detainees. His background was in artillery, and he had no interrogation or intelligence experience. He had never even sat in on an interrogation, as he openly admitted. This inexperience showed when he ordered that interrogations be run like military operations: there had to be a fixed start time and end time, and he wanted a fixed number of interrogations to be conducted each day.

  CITF tried explaining to him that interrogations don’t work like that. Each detainee is different, knows different things, and has different triggers that will get him to cooperate. Giving fixed end times to interrogations is better for the detainee, as he knows he only needs to hold out for a certain period of time, after which the interrogation will be over.

  I learned years later that the move to employ aggressive interrogation techniques at Gitmo started long before Qahtani was alleged to be not cooperating. The November 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, declassified in April 2009, reported that back in December 2001, seven months before we even identified Qahtani and removed him from the general Gitmo population, the Department of Defense’s general counsel’s office, headed by William James Haynes II, requested help with detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency’s military Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) trainers. Haynes was a close friend of Vice President Dick Cheney’s counsel, David Addington, and had been the best man at his wedding.

  SERE was established to teach U.S. military personnel how to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions. The strategies are partly based on tactics used by Chinese Communists during the Korean War to gain false confessions. The Senate report cites the deputy commander of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA)’s higher headquarters, saying that “the expertise of JPRA lies in training personnel how to respond and resist interrogations—not in how to conduct interrogations.”

  The wisdom of the Senate report was not available on September 16, 2002, when, following up on the earlier assistance, a group of military interrogators and behavioral scientists from Gitmo went to JPRA, in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, for SERE training. On September 25, 2002, a delegation of senior Bush administration lawyers, including Jim Haynes and David Addington, along with John Rizzo and Michael Chertoff, then with the criminal division of the Justice Department (later director of Homeland Security), traveled to Gitmo for discussions on how interrogations should be run.

  On October 2, 2002, the chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center met with Gitmo staff. The Senate Armed Services Committee report notes: “Minutes of that meeting indicate that it was dominated by a discussion of aggressive interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, death threats, and waterboarding, which was discussed in relation to its use in SERE training.”

  By the time the CTC chief counsel was giving this briefing, CIA contractors interrogating Abu Zubaydah had already been employing the aggressive techniques that I had [6 words redacted] objected to, and which FBI director Robert Mueller had ordered his agents not to use. But when Mark Fallon and other members of CITF, and the FBI, tried to gain access to the September 25 and October 2 meetings, to argue against the use of aggressive interrogation techniques, they were tu
rned away. It appeared to CITF members that a decision had been made to employ harsh techniques, and the Bush delegation didn’t want to hear any contrary opinions. It was a strange situation, with lawyers giving orders on how interrogations should be run, and experienced practitioners not allowed to offer their views.

  Following these meetings, on October 11, General Dunlavey sent a memo to his military superior, Gen. James Hill, requesting authorization for aggressive interrogation techniques. There were three progressively harsh categories. Category I included yelling at the detainee and allowing the interrogator to claim he was the citizen of a foreign country known for the harsh treatment of detainees. Among Category II techniques were the use of stress positions, isolation, twenty-hour interrogations, the removal of clothing, and the use of phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress in the detainee. Category III techniques included scenarios designed to make the detainee believe that imminent harm was about to befall either him or his family, and the use of water to induce the “misperception” of suffocation. The techniques were defended in a legal memo by then Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, the senior-most lawyer at Guantánamo.The request passed through General Hill’s office up through the chain of command and landed on Jim Haynes’s desk for his recommendation to Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.

  The way the legal system in the military worked was that lawyers from all services could offer opinions, but ultimate legal authority rested with the defense secretary’s general counsel. The Senate report details various objections that different services had to the techniques. The Marine Corps, for example, stated that several techniques “arguably violate federal law, and would expose our service members to possible prosecution,” and called for “a more thorough legal and policy review.”

  Ignoring the warnings, Haynes sent a one-page memo to Secretary Rumsfeld on November 27, as the Senate report notes, “recommending that he approve all but three of the eighteen techniques in the GTMO request. . . . Mr. Haynes’s memo indicated that he had discussed the issue with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, and General Myers and that he believed they concurred in his recommendation.”