The Exile

by Adrian Levy

  Revising history, Bush said: “We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives … As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation.” Referring to the torture program first tested out in Thailand in 2002, the president continued: “And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” There was no mention of the coffins and dog boxes, the waterboarding and mock executions, but Bush was able to confirm that “the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.”

  Quashing accusations that the techniques were illegal and immoral, he said that the program had been subjected to “multiple legal reviews” and conducted by a “pool of experienced CIA officers.” Those selected to conduct the most sensitive questioning had to complete more than 250 additional hours of specialized training before they were allowed to have contact with a captured terrorist, he said. “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world,” the president concluded. “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it—and I will not authorize it.”

  Bush did not reveal that one of Abu Zubaydah’s former torturers had recently visited him in his current location and apologized. “He said that he was sorry for what they had done to me,” Zubaydah wrote in his diary. “That they had been acting without rules, giving me no rights, trying to get information from me in any way they could, and that he realized I did not know anything … He then began to cry.”

  Inside Guantánamo, tensions were running high even before the new arrivals landed. To date, more than a hundred inmates had attempted suicide, including one mass suicide attempt in August 2003 and three—two Saudis and a Yemeni—who had succeeded in June 2006.

  When Zubaydah, Khalid, and the others reached the base, they did not join the 455 men housed in the main jail but were taken to a newly constructed facility on a wooded hillside above the base, accessed by a heavily guarded single-track road. Camp 7 was a fortress that had been designed to house the “worst of the worst,” as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described them.

  Inside their cells, the fourteen new detainees would be watched around the clock on monitors. Their guard—Task Force Platinum—had the authority to conduct cell searches and remove personal letters or legal papers at will.29 Some of those held in Camp 7 would later complain of constant noise being pumped into their cells, which vibrated and frequently smelled of noxious fumes.30

  For some of the new arrivals, including Abu Zubaydah, it was not their first visit to Cuba.31 He and others had been secretly incarcerated there at a Defense Department facility known as Strawberry Fields in 2003. But in March 2004, as concern mounted that a pending Supreme Court decision over another prisoner might go against the Bush administration and force it to provide detainees with a counsel who would hear details of their treatment, the CIA had taken them back into custody. In Zubaydah’s case, he was transported to a black site in Morocco.32

  Now, after four years and five months in limbo, and seven different renditions, Zubaydah found himself on a long flight from an unofficial CIA detention facility he suspected was in Afghanistan, followed by a journey over water and then a bumpy ride in a hard-sprung military vehicle.33 A black patch covered the eye that he had lost during his time in Thailand, although the precise circumstances of that loss remained “classified.”34

  He still had his writing pad, and he assessed his condition, writing that he had become prone to episodes of random fainting. “I would lose my writing capabilities as well, or I would mix up things when I wrote. However this condition would usually last for hours or few days until I would reach a point where I would totally lose my writing capabilities. That time it lasted for a long period of time. It lasted for over an entire year.”

  On paper, this transfer appeared to be a significant improvement in his prospects. But given that the detainees’ new home was offshore and therefore also free from U.S. laws, they could still be held without proper access to lawyers and interrogated as the military saw fit.

  Zubaydah documented the impact of his new interrogation sessions at Guantánamo. “The people in charge would tell me: ‘… you are probably bluffing us.’ I started urinating on myself every time I fainted. I started to become afraid that, or feel like I am not even able to control my feces, so I decided not to drink or eat anything to preserve my dignity. They thought I was on a hunger strike and started inflicting on me the hunger strike punishment.”

  He poured it all into his diary. “Hani has experienced his entire time since capture as [one] experience. On the one hand, there are 5 things that are changed—better food, gym, etc. On the other hand, there are 5 things that are constant—hopelessness, etc. Sometimes thinking about his situation is distressing enough to trigger a seizure.”35

  September 21, 2006, Washington, D.C.

  When Musharraf arrived in Washington, D.C., for his first state visit in more than a year, President Bush was basking in the glow of the Guantánamo transfers and in no mood for ratifying deals with Taliban and Al Qaeda representatives in Pakistan.

  Musharraf had brought along General Aurakzai to explain the brilliance of their new Waziristan Accord.36 He gave a sharp fifteen-minute presentation to Pentagon and CIA officials, only to be rounded on.

  The Bush administration would do all that it could to undermine the deal, they were told.

  Musharraf appeared on CBS, clearly unsettled, and hit out, randomly, wildly, regurgitating evidence of having been wronged, wherever he could find it, revealing how in September 2001 Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, had threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age” if it did not toe the line. It had been, Musharraf said primly, “a very rude remark” and demonstrated how Washington infantilized Islamabad.

  Every time he came to the United States he felt as if someone was going to tell him off, when the Islamic Republic had lost so much blood in the fight.37

  What about the accord? Musharraf no longer appeared to be so sure. It was not about peace, he said, distractedly. It might be about war, he added. “This treaty is not to deal with the Taliban. It is actually to fight the Taliban. The misperception [is] in the media.” There would be no more Al Qaeda or Taliban activity in FATA or across the border in Afghanistan, and no “Talibanization” of Pakistan, he declared.

  When Musharraf met President Bush, he handed over a signed copy of his new memoir, In the Line of Fire, which had been ghostwritten by several subordinates, including his staff officer Brigadier Asim Bajwa, who had narrowly survived one of the assassination attempts on Musharraf’s presidential convoy in 2003.38

  “He holds the single most crucial job in the global war on terror,” declared the jacket blurb. “He is transforming Pakistan from a third-world nation to a democratic, enlightened, prosperous state … the entire world depends upon him to succeed.”

  October 30, 2006, 5 A.M., Zai-ul Uloom Taleemal Qu’ran Seminary, Chinagai Village, Bajaur Agency, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan

  A brigade of cooks busied themselves, preparing to feed the one-hundred-plus guests due at nine A.M. “Curd and milk,” Maulvi Liaqat Ali reminded them, as he strutted around in his black pakul and woolen waistcoat. “Make sure not to burn the bread.”

  “Line up,” Faqir Mohammad instructed the students as orderly boys knelt to perform dawn prayers. They had just returned from Eid al-Fitr holidays, and they were excited that their seminary was hosting a historic jirga that would write them into the history books.

  Daylight shimmered on the horizon when the missiles slammed into the madrassa. Afterward, there was silence for a moment, until the survivors began to scream. As the smoke cleared, villagers who charged over recovered shrapnel from American projectiles tha
t they laid out beside eighty-one corpses, sixty-nine of them under the age of seventeen. Among the dead was Liaqat Ali.

  By midmorning, an armed militia of thousands massed, men who had come to celebrate but now vowed to wage war. Two days after the funerals, preacher Faqir Mohammad resurfaced at a rally and denounced the governments of Pakistan and America, before praising Dr. al-Zawahiri and Osama. He was cheered on by a gun-toting mob.39

  In Islamabad, grim-faced government officials who no longer knew if they were making peace or going on the offensive hunkered down. On November 8, two men wrapped in shawls talked their way into the Punjab Regiment Centre at Dargai and blew themselves up, killing forty-two trainee soldiers. “Body parts, hats, shoes, and pieces of military uniforms were scattered all around the parade grounds,” reported an eyewitness.

  Days later, General Aurakzai’s convoy was attacked at Wana, with RPGs clattering off his roof. Shaken but unhurt, Aurakzai emerged to denounce the Chinagai attack, and he hit out at Musharraf, too. It had been a U.S. drone strike, he fumed, designed “to stop the agreement from going ahead.” Aurakzai recalled: “We went overboard in supporting the Americans. We crossed the red line when we should have concentrated on our national interests.”40 The painting on his study wall showing him at the signing ceremony with tribal elders in Khyber Agency now filled him with bitterness every time he passed it. “Maybe the gun is more powerful than the pen after all,” he muttered.

  Musharraf publicly distanced himself from the massacre, but privately ISI chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was ordered to tighten up procedures for advance vetting of U.S. raids and come up with a plan to extricate Pakistan from the drone program altogether, without losing Washington’s largesse.41

  At the same time the CIA debated how to expand its drone program and focus on the more senior targets, such as Osama and Dr. al-Zawahiri, concluding that the only certain way to reach them was to groom a traitor.

  The agency wanted the impossible. They needed a person in the room, an individual with a high-ranking jihadist pedigree who was accessible, cooperative, and had the will to turn on Al Qaeda. It would be an extraordinarily perilous mission, as the outfit was already on its guard. Al Qaeda Central now suspected everyone. “Be especially wary of newly-joined members,” said one intercepted communication.42 “No matter their status or capabilities, they must not be placed in leadership positions, as there are many dangers lurking. Victory lies ahead, so one must remain on the lookout for penetrations and be extremely wary.”

  News had just reached Dr. al-Zawahiri that Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the Shakai commander and his chosen successor to lead Al Qaeda in Iraq, had been arrested in the Turkish city of Gaziantep as he prepared to cross into Syria. After keeping him for two weeks in detention, along with his wife and children, the Turkish authorities deported the family to Afghanistan and into the arms of the CIA, which took them to Bagram.43 Al Qaeda in Iraq was once again leaderless as Dr. al-Zawahiri fretted about who else was qualified to fill the void.

  November 2006, ISI Safe House, Islamabad

  Al Qaeda courier Hassan Ghul, a man who Bush had once called a killer, and whose capture had meant “one less enemy we have to worry about,” had been transferred back into ISI custody with instructions that he should be set loose in the Tribal Areas to search for Osama bin Laden.

  Confirmation of this came from Rangzieb Ahmed, a British Pakistani from Manchester who was arrested by the ISI in Haripur around the same time and met Ghul in November 2006, when they were held in adjoining cells.44 “I talked to him when no guards were around and he told me that the CIA had kept him in a secret location for two years,” said Ahmed.

  He described how he and Ghul were taken for questioning at an interrogation center, where the treatment worsened by the day, culminating in his fingernails being pulled out with pliers.45 Both, Ahmed claimed, were regularly beaten and threatened, while Western intelligence agents watched.

  Ghul’s situation deteriorated, the prisoner becoming rambling and incoherent. However, the British prisoner’s situation improved after a smartly dressed ISI officer came one day and asked him to fill out some forms stamped Security Act of Pakistan 1952. “He congratulated me and said I was now a legal detainee and that the government of Pakistan knew about me,” Ahmed said. “He stated that there were many people who did not even have that recognition.”

  They included Ghul. One day in January 2007, Ahmed returned from an interrogation session to find him gone from the safe house. A year later Ahmed was deported back to the United Kingdom, where he would be convicted of terrorism offenses, never to see Ghul again.46

  Shortly after Ahmed’s departure, the ISI appeared to put the CIA’s plan into action. They told Ghul they would release him too, but only if he became their asset and reported back regularly through two cut-outs (intermediaries) in Waziristan called Malik and Khalid who answered to an ISI major in the Peshawar station.

  Apparently Ghul agreed, the ISI reported back to the CIA, and a pseudonym was created for him: Asset Imtiaz. He had the perfect cover story. An Al Qaeda administrator and courier with several years’ experience, he had served time with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Abu Faraj—and could prove it. He had been told to use the stories of his capture and torture at the hands of the Americans and the ISI to leverage a good position for himself. He was to claim that he had escaped custody, like Abu Yahya, who had legged it out of Bagram and become a jihad media sensation.

  Once he had been readmitted and his freedom had been celebrated, he should ask to move to a role that would bring him closer to Dr. al-Zawahiri or even Osama. There was a warning. If Asset Imtiaz cut ties with his handler or otherwise deceived the ISI, his family would pay the price. Past masters at turning the screw, the ISI advised that his sister, Nabila, his wife, and his children, as well as other family members who lived in Pakistan, were under constant surveillance and could be picked up in minutes.

  In May 2007, Asset Imtiaz was driven to Karachi Company, a bus depot on the outskirts of Islamabad, and dropped off with a bag of cash, a secondhand Nokia brick, and a fake national identity card. He could not carry any kind of tracking or communication device for fear of being uncovered as a spy.

  From now on he would use coded e-mails sent from cyber cafés dotted around the main towns of FATA. “I have reached Miram Shah,” he wrote in his first message. “I am being vetted so you may not hear from me for some time.”

  June 2007, Abbottabad, Pakistan

  The CIA was reviewing what it had learned over the years about Al Qaeda couriers. After interrogating more than a dozen suspects, they decided that the absence of new and building profiles on Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti—a name they believed to be reliable—was indicative and might be just as significant as the information itself.

  A CIA targeting study dated May 20, 2007, laid it out: “KSM described Abu Ahmad as a relatively minor figure and Abu Faraj al-Libi denied all knowledge of Abu Ahmad. Station assesses that KSM and Abu Faraj’s reporting is not credible on this topic and their attempts to downplay Abu Ahmad’s importance or deny knowledge of Abu Ahmad are likely part of an effort to withhold information on [Osama] or his close associates. These denials, combined with reporting from other detainees indicating that Abu Ahmad worked closely with KSM and Abu Faraj add to our belief that Abu Ahmad is a High Value Target courier or facilitator.”

  The kunya was likely right as was information as to his role and seniority, but how, the study asked, could the authorities find the individual himself?

  Out in the field, the man they were discussing was exhausted.

  Ibrahim had new letters to deliver to Atiyah in Waziristan, Osama’s responses to massing critics in the Arabian Peninsula, who were oblivious to Al Qaeda Central’s thwarted attempt to appoint Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi as successor to dead Zarqawi and railed about his legacy of violence in Iraq.

  A writer who called himself “the one who loves you in Riyadh” accused Osama of making “colossal strategic errors” and causing a crisis i
n the movement by supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq. “Being besieged and distant is not the best environment for thinking and for forming the right opinion and decision. In this case, one should seek the opinion of brothers who are outside of the hardship.”47 Did Osama only care to protect himself and “let the entire world burn down?”

  Supporting Zarqawi’s bloodthirsty reign of terror in Iraq had “turned people against you, especially scholars and intellectuals.” For supporters it was not enough that Zarqawi was dead; they wanted to know why he had been supported while he was alive and how the terror he had fomented would be stilled.

  The only way out of this crisis was for the Sheikh to conduct an audit. “It is not appropriate for an honest person to think that he is always right and that those who disagree with him are ignorant,” the writer continued, identifying the same weakness in Osama that the Mauritanian and many others had zeroed in on.

  The writer finished with an ultimatum: “Focus on the head of the snake [America] in its home or in areas that it occupies, such as Afghanistan and Iraq.” There could be no more repeats of the wedding day massacre in Jordan. No more needless killings of Shia in Iraq or elsewhere.

  What “the one who loves you in Riyadh” did not appreciate was the crisis propagated by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi’s arrest. With no strong leader representing Al Qaeda’s interests in Iraq, a bloodthirsty and ambitious mujahid called Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza, an old comrade of al-Zawahiri from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad days, had seized control of the group and was taking it down a dangerous new route.