The Exile

by Adrian Levy

  It was the “criminal role” of Pakistan’s president Musharraf that should be blamed for the unraveling, said a statement almost certainly written by Khalid.

  During the DHA raid, the FBI found automatic weapons, grenades, and ammunition. They also a recovered a letter signed “Mukh,” advising someone about a future attack on two hotels.

  Family photos found at Tariq Road showed Khalid dressed in Kuwaiti robes and standing with “at least one wife” and several children. The pictures were a bonus as they were much more recent than those the FBI and CIA had on file. The search team also recovered a satellite phone, several laptops and mobile phones, CDs, travel documents, more passports, and instructions on how to evade attention when boarding an aircraft.

  On the kitchen wall they found a message scrawled in blood: “There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger.”108

  The Pakistanis were given three days to question al-Shibh at an ISI detention facility in Karachi, with the CIA observing. He had only one thing to say, over and again: “My name is Abdullah, servant of Allah.”109

  On September 15, he was shipped out of Pakistan as Musharraf’s press secretary told reporters, “Al Qaeda is either in hiding or on the run. Their back is breaking and we are getting constant leads, more and more with each arrest. It’s snowballing.”110

  The ISI bore down on the Rabbani brothers, convinced that Ahmed, despite his slight stature and Burmese features, was Khalid’s courier Hassan Ghul. Khalid’s sons were also questioned and given Coca-Colas. “You have to help us out for the sake of the kids,” an ISI colonel warned the Rabbanis.

  When they refused, the ISI handed the children to the CIA, which transferred them to an adult detention center. When they refused to talk, food and water were withheld although an American official told one newspaper: “We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible.”111 The CIA later claimed to have had “child psychologists on hand at all times” and that the two boys had been “given the best of care”; but according to adult detainees held with them, ants and other insects were put on the boys’ legs before both were locked up in small containers, similar to the treatment meted out to Abu Zubaydah.112 When the boys still remained silent, the CIA flew them out of Pakistan and into the secret detention program along with the Rabbani brothers.113

  However, material gathered from the raids was exposing Khalid’s life. One of the prizes was a battered suitcase, held together with tape, that contained bank records, letters, and his framed diploma from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The certificate became a political football in the ever-growing turf war between FBI and CIA agents, with the FBI wanting to keep it as evidence while a senior CIA officer wanted to put it on his wall as a trophy. As the two security departments fought over prisoners and methods of interrogation, Islamabad’s new CIA station chief tried to keep details of raids and seizures away from the FBI’s legal attaché, Jennifer Keenan, whose confrontations with the agency grew ever more bitter.114 What the suitcase and the belief they had captured courier Hassan Ghul told everyone was that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad was on the move and in regular touch with Osama bin Laden.

  Zalmay Khalilzad was East meets West: a Pashtun in a smart business suit with Afghan and U.S. flag lapel badges. He had left Afghanistan as a teenager, benefited from some expensive education (the American University of Beirut and University of Chicago) and cut his teeth in Washington as an aide to Zbigniew Brzezinski, an architect of America’s support of the Afghan mujahideen.

  Recently appointed as President George W. Bush’s special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, he was the highest-ranking Muslim in the administration.115 Afghans, who joked that he, and not Karzai, was the real president, were frequently starstruck by him.

  In May, Khalilzad joined the U.S. National Security Council and became part of a team laying down the foundations for the White House’s Iraq campaign. He also reached out to Iran, believing it had to be won over rather than attacked.116

  If the Bonn conference had represented the “pinnacle of cooperation,” the Axis of Evil speech had sunk the relationship. President Bush had been wrong to pillory Iran, he said. Washington had to think more creatively. “There was not one but two Irans,” Khalilzad advised U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. One was pro-engagement, steered by President Khatami, and the other—the fiefdom of General Qassem Suleimani, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and the Revolutionary Guard—was “belligerent, unpredictable, anti-American, and bloodthirsty.”117

  The president’s State of the Union address had denigrated both, weakening Khatami, who was portrayed by his enemies as having failed in his pointless mission, and emboldening General Suleimani—thereby dropping a daisy cutter on U.S.-Iran relations.

  Khalilzad, a self-styled crusader who could express himself in Dari, Pashto, and English, would fix this, and he also needed to broach a sensitive intelligence issue. Following the Iranians’ surprise delivery to Kabul of a group of low-level Al Qaeda prisoners, the CIA had reported back some startling news. In a highly classified cable, the White House had been informed that most of Al Qaeda’s leadership, in particular its military and religious committees, had slipped into Iran, although it was not clear whether this had been done with the knowledge of the government in Tehran or not. It was “likely that Osama’s family, including his sons, [were there] too.” The cable continued: “Members of this group are in regular contact with OBL, and his network in Quetta, Peshawar, and Karachi, by mobile phone and also via couriers. Need deft attempt to extract/penetrate/manipulate.”118

  Khalilzad set off for Geneva intent on buttonholing Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian diplomat who had turned around the Bonn conference and was now Iran’s representative at the United Nations. He took along State Department official Ryan Crocker, who already had a warm relationship with Zarif thanks to their secret discussions on mutual assistance between the United States and Iran in the early days after 9/11.

  When they met, Khalilzad got straight to the point. He had a proposal to make: “Look,” he said, “you hand them over to us directly. Or, assuming this is sensitive, you send the Al Qaeda leadership et cetera to their respective countries. Deport them. Extradite them. Give it whatever name you will. Or if this won’t work, hand them to the Afghans—as you did before.”

  Zarif listened intently but was uncharacteristically silent. He left the meeting saying he would seek advice from Tehran.

  By the time they met again in November 2002, the Iranian position seemed to have calcified. Crocker concluded that the damage wrought by the State of the Union address was insurmountable, with Iran and the United States now, again, rivals in the region. “We just never knew what Zarif was thinking or what he actually knew about the Al Qaeda issue,” Khalilzad later reflected.

  Both men were frustrated. “We were at a turning point,” Khalilzad recalled. “Iran could have helped us end this Al Qaeda crisis. But we spent the time we should have been negotiating the end of Al Qaeda in trying to heal wounds, and frankly, there was simply not the appetite in the White House to reach out to Tehran warmly and constructively—even though the prize was a massive one. ‘Let them rot in hell’ was the message coming out of Vice President Cheney’s office. And it was not just Iran that was being cold-shouldered. By taking this aggressive approach, the U.S. was committing itself to war over peace.”119

  November 2002, Ramsar, Iran

  The Mauritanian had watched Yosri Fouda’s 9/11 documentary at his tourist lodge on the Caspian Sea. He and his family had been living there unobtrusively for several months—in a large house on the beach that felt comfortably far from the gaze of intelligence officials. He had obtained permission from the local Quds Force agent, who visited weekly, to put up a satellite dish—his wife throwing a sheet over it to conceal it from neighbors—ostensibly so his children could watch Iranian educational pro
grams, as they still could not speak Farsi. But most of the time he hogged it for himself.

  When he wasn’t following the news, he tried to bring some routine back into his children’s lives by giving them lessons. He put on a brave face, but when he watched news about the arrests in Karachi he realized just how insecure Al Qaeda really was.

  One day he became certain that the Ministry of Intelligence and Security was trying to hack into his laptop “to see whether I was communicating with others without their knowledge.” He shared his fear with his wife. Iran was now positively hostile, plotting against Al Qaeda. Of equal concern was the fact that prisoners handed over to the Americans were disappearing once they reached U.S. custody.

  In November, the Mauritanian learned from the agent that the standoff between General Qassem Suleimani, the intelligence ministry, and Khatami’s Reformists had reached such a crisis point that Iran was no longer going to host Al Qaeda’s leaders. They all would have to leave the country.

  The Mauritanian was appalled and terrified. He had to think fast. On November 28, he and his family dismantled their home in Ramsar, leaving everything behind except for a few toys, clothes, his pocket Koran, and a laptop. An official car drove them to Tehran, where he had one last brief meeting with Ali before returning to Qom, where he and his family were put up in a guesthouse. The following morning, they were deposited at the long-distance bus station in Arak. “I thanked my escort for his kindness and gentleness over the past months and bade him a final farewell,” said the Mauritanian, who had been advised to make his own way across the border. The Iranians did not want to know where they were heading, only that they had gone.120

  His family stood helplessly, watching travelers milling around, while he bought a SIM card and a mobile phone, convinced that the minute he left Iran the Americans would seize him. None of them could leave. Taking his family to a café, he began calling Al Qaeda brothers, eventually reaching a son-in-law of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri who directed him to a safe house in Karaj.121

  The Mauritanian was relieved to hear that many senior figures remained concealed in Iran. Osama’s adult sons were with Saif al-Adel in Shiraz, accompanied by the operational planner Abu Mohammed al-Masri and by Mohammed al-Islambouli, whose brother Khalid had been executed for his part in the murder of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and whose daughter was married to Othman bin Laden.

  Osama’s reluctant spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was hiding with a Sunni family in Zahidan. Also in Iran were the paramilitary commander Abu Laith al-Libi and Thirwat Shihata, an aide to Dr. al-Zawahiri.122

  They all kept in touch with Al Qaeda Central in Shakai through Yasin al-Suri, a young Syrian courier who delivered messages from Iran and brought back cash and new recruits for Zarqawi.

  However, within a day of settling in Karaj, disturbing news blurred the picture. Hetmatyar’s safe house in Zabol had been raided. Khairiah, Saad, Hamzah, and the younger children had been taken into protective custody, where intelligence agents were questioning them.

  Al Qaeda in Iran needed to regroup. They needed to free Osama’s family. But Karaj did not feel at all hospitable. “I noticed suspicious people all the time,” the Mauritanian recalled. He sent word to Saif al-Adel, who knew the Quds Force and intelligence ministry better than anyone else in Al Qaeda, asking for advice.

  In the third week of December he got a reply. He should join Saif’s group in Shiraz. Using the code word “honey,” they told him that they were stockpiling fissile material for a new attack on an as yet unspecified American target. Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, chairman of Al Qaeda’s foreign relations committee and an explosives expert who had helped build the bombs used in the 1998 U.S. embassy attacks, was busy designing the device.123

  On December 25, shortly before the Mauritanian was due to move, a loud knocking woke the family. As he opened up, an Iranian intelligence officer barged in, followed by a half dozen armed men who rushed around the house pulling out books and drawers, filming as they ransacked.

  The Mauritanian’s family was ordered upstairs, while he was led into his living room. They knew he was Al Qaeda, they said. He feigned ignorance, but he could see they were well briefed. “Get dressed and bring your things,” one of them ordered. “We are taking you into custody.”

  As he was led out, the wives and children of other brothers were brought in. Karaj was being turned over house by house. He called out to his wife as he was bundled into a car. “There’s money hidden. You will find it. This problem will end soon, God willing.” This was no way to leave them, he thought, worrying that he was about to vanish like Abu Zubaydah. Or would he be paraded before the cameras like Ramzi bin al-Shibh?

  The car started up and there was no mistaking the route they took. They were heading back to Tehran. And to what? Deportation into the hands of the United States? He had to try something. He could not fight his way out. But he could talk. “Is not America the Great Satan?” he asked the driver and his guard, smiling nervously.

  The broad-shouldered man in the passenger seat turned and glared. “You destroyed Afghanistan and you came here to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he hissed. “We will not risk the future of more than seventy million Iranians for ants like you.”124

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “The banging was so strong that I felt at some point that my skull was in pieces.”

  —ABU ZUBAYDAH, WRITING IN HIS PRISON DIARY, 20021

  August 4, 2002, Detention Site Green, Thailand

  Following warnings that “countless more Americans may die unless we can persuade AZ to tell us what he knows,” Abu Zubaydah had been held in isolation for forty-seven days while the interrogation program designed by U.S. Air Force survival school psychologist Dr. Mitchell was upgraded and refined in Washington.2

  Several meetings took place at CIA headquarters to discuss the possible use of “novel interrogation methods” and Mitchell provided a list of twelve SERE techniques: (1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) waterboarding, (10) use of diapers, (11) use of insects, and (12) mock burial.3

  Mitchell recommended that the CIA enter into a contract with Dr. Bruce Jessen, his co-author of a report written the previous December on potential Al Qaeda resistance and his former colleague at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. Like Mitchell, Jessen, who had grown up in a Mormon community in Utah, had no practical experience of interrogation, but his reputation at Fairchild was legendary and his CIA appointment was approved.4

  Evidence that the CIA team on the ground in Thailand felt that the new “aggressive methods” under discussion might cross the red line and cause permanent damage to Zubaydah was contained in a cable sent to headquarters on July 15, 2002: “We need to get reasonable assurance that [Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

  If the worst-case scenario happened and Zubaydah died, “we need to be prepared to act accordingly, keeping in mind the liaison equities involving our hosts.”5 His body should be cremated.6

  Officers from Langley responded several days later, stating, “The interrogation process takes precedence over preventative medical procedures” and confirming that “all major players are in concurrence that Zubaydah should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”7

  On July 24, Attorney General John Ashcroft had verbally approved the use of ten interrogation techniques, which included walling, cramped confinement, and the use of diapers and insects. When the interrogation team indicated that they intended to wait for the approval of waterboarding, the attorney general verbally approved it on July 26.8 Soon after, Dr. Mitchell flew back to Thailand, where he was joined by Dr. Jessen, while the FBI’s Ali Soufan was ordered to permanently withdraw from the case.9

  The new process started at eleven fifty A.M. on August 4, 2002, after a decision was taken that it would be continued on a near twenty-four-hour-per-day
basis.10 A medical officer wrote an e-mail updating Langley, subject heading: “So it begins.”11 A number of guards entered Zubaydah’s cell accompanied by two CIA interrogators. One of them pointed to a large wooden box that looked like a coffin. They flipped it upright and beckoned Zubaydah over. “From now on this is going to be your home.”12

  The vertical casket was just about big enough for him if he sat on the bucket placed inside for human waste, Zubaydah later wrote in his diary.13 He didn’t know how long he was inside when he “heard the click of a lock” and light flooded in. “I felt something was being wrapped around my neck. I suddenly saw another man … He was twisting a thick towel, which was wrapped with a plastic tape so it could be given the shape of a noose. He wrapped it around my neck and dragged me. I fell on the floor along with the bucket, with all its content that fell on me.”

  Without uttering any words, the interrogator slammed Zubaydah’s head against a concrete wall. This was the CIA-approved technique of “walling,” but it immediately became obvious to Zubaydah that he would sustain serious injury if it continued without some kind of modification.14 The next time he saw the wall a plywood skin had been placed on top of the concrete wall and the procedure then continued.15

  To Zubaydah, it still felt like his skull was shattering. “He started banging my head against the wall with both his hands. The banging was so strong that I felt at some point that my skull was in pieces, or that the artificial bone in my open head was falling apart. I don’t know how to describe that feeling. The feeling was abnormal … It lasted forever and that guy … was not getting tired from beating me.”16

  The beating intensified as the man yelled at Zubaydah: “You think you have pride? I will show you now what pride is about.” Zubaydah felt his back was breaking due to the intensity of the banging. “He started slapping my face again and … yelling.”17