by Steve Coll
4. Ibid. Later that day, Kayani met National Security Adviser Jim Jones at the White House, according to a chronology prepared by a participant in the visit. Jones presented a written response to the “Kayani 1.0” white paper. At this stage, however, the exchanges broke little new ground.
5. All description from the author’s visit to Zaeef’s home, April 3, 2010.
6. Interviews with participants in the discussions.
7. All quotations, author’s April 3 interview.
8. The I.S.A.F. task forces charged with supervision of Taliban prisoners at Bagram produced these reports annually for several years. The New York Times later obtained and published one, based on interviews in 2011, www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/asia/23atwar-taliban-report-docviewer.html?_r=0. Obama’s comments: Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
9. Strick van Linschoten, draft monograph for the Afghan Analysts Network, 2016. “Partly due . . . free media”: Borhan Osman and Anand Gopal, “Taliban Views on the Future State,” forthcoming, as cited by Strick van Linschoten.
10. Interviews with participants.
11. Karachi base swelled to about three dozen, agreement with Zardari and Pasha: Interview with the Pakistani official involved. Baradar’s arrest: Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife, p. 269, and interviews with U.S. officials knowledgeable about the case. “If you kill him,” from an interview with a participant, summarizing the thrust of the American message to I.S.I.
12. Interviews with participants and contemporary records. “The ‘truths’ Baradar could tell . . .”: State Department cable, Islamabad to Washington, February 26, 2010, WikiLeaks.
13. Obaidullah, Ishakzai, “Pakistani prisons are worse . . .”: Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
14. Interviews with Obama administration officials who pieced Mansour’s profile together after his promotion in 2010. For more on Zakir, see Chandrasekaran, Little America, pp. 288–90. For a biography of Mansour, see The New York Times, October 4, 2015.
15. Interviews with half a dozen Obama administration officials who worked to clarify the profiles of Taliban leaders and envoys during this period.
16. Ibid.
17. Pasha: Interview with a senior intelligence official who attended.
18. Interviews with several Obama administration officials involved.
19. Conflict Resolution Cell dates: All quotations from interviews with Obama administration officials involved and contemporary records.
Chapter Twenty-five: Kayani 2.0
1. Plea hearing, United States of America v. Faisal Shahzad, 10-CR-541, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, June 21, 2010.
2. The chronology and details of the attack are all drawn from documents filed in U.S. v. Shahzad, particularly Shahzad’s testimony at his plea hearing, the criminal complaint, and the government’s sentencing memo of September 29, 2010.
3. This account of Pasha’s May 9 meeting with Karzai is drawn from interviews with two people familiar with the meeting and contemporary records of what Karzai told the Obama administration when he arrived in Washington, as well as interviews with participants. Karzai and a senior Pakistani military officer denied that Pasha proposed a new partnership at the expense of the United States. The Pakistani military officer said the visit “was meant to show support to Afghanistan and President Karzai.”
4. Daudzai provided this account to Obama administration officials in June.
5. This account of Karzai’s state visit and his discussions with Clinton and others draws on multiple interviews with participants and contemporary records.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. “They didn’t give me enough . . . legitimacy”: Author’s interview with the aide. Kayani drops “friendly” at this meeting: Interviews with American and Pakistani officials, as well as contemporary records.
12. All quotations and summary of C.I.A. analysis, ibid.
13. The character of Karzai’s doubts about Saleh is from interviews with United Nations and other officials who interacted with him on intelligence and security matters at the time, as well as from Saleh’s account of Karzai’s accusations against him and Atmar in June.
14. “Brother Taliban-jan” is from The New York Times, June 2, 2010. The account here draws also on the Afghanistan Analysts Network contemporary blogs of the jirga and Reuters reporting of Karzai’s remarks.
15. The account of this meeting is from interviews with Saleh and a second senior Afghan official familiar with the meeting. All quotations are from the interviews, which took place between two and four years after the event. Karzai confirmed the general outlines of the exchange, but denied using some of the language attributed to him.
16. Ibid.
17. Sentencing memorandum, United States of America v. Faisal Shahzad.
18. Author’s interviews with participants and contemporary records.
19. Interviews with Pakistani and American participants in the discussions that summer.
20. Department of State transcript, “Television Roundtable with Pakistani Journalists,” July 19, 2010.
21. The author was able to read and take notes from a copy of the letter.
Chapter Twenty-six: Lives and Limbs
1. With gratitude to Tim Hopper for sharing his journal and recollections with researcher Christina Satkowski and Elizabeth Barber. Now-Captain Hopper later earned a graduate degree at Syracuse University and remains in the Army as a health care comptroller in San Antonio. “In one sense, we accomplished a lot,” he said in a recent conversation. “In Bakersfield—the Russians never took it. We took back a lot of area. But it didn’t last. It doesn’t seem like it did. We made transient changes. Nothing that stayed. Was it worth all this? Did we make a difference? I think we did. For certain [Afghan] individuals, who were grateful that we brought their home back. But we were there for only a year. It’s hard for them to put their faith in us, because we won’t be there. We did what we were told to and we accomplished our mission. But did we change the course of the war? I don’t know.”
2. No-fly zone south of Highway 1: Interview with Brigadier General William Gayler, then commander of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, and with Anthony Carlson, historian at the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, who has researched a history of the Strike task force.
3. Memorandum from Tunnell to Secretary of the Army John McHugh, August 20, 2010, www.michaelyon-online.com/images/pdf/secarmy_redacted-redux.pdf. Murder and obstruction charges against soldiers under Tunnell’s command: www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/afghan.coverup/.
4. Interview with Kandarian. The exchange took place at Fort Campbell in May 2010 when McChrystal and Kandarian accompanied Hamid Karzai to visit American troops headed to Kandahar. Richard Holbrooke had hoped the Fort Campbell trip would rehabilitate Karzai’s reputation in the United States by demonstrating his gratitude for the forthcoming American military effort.
5. All quotations, interview with Kandarian.
6. The Strike task force and Kandarian later assembled a “Book of Valor” documenting the specific deaths, wounds, and service awards for meritorious conduct during the brigade’s 2010–11 tour of Kandahar. Dates and details of the deaths of Hunter and Park are from the book, interviews with Hunter’s family, and interviews with soldiers in the task force.
7. The author traveled with Mullen for The New Yorker during part of the admiral’s trip; these quotations are from contemporaneous notes.
8. “Sending troops . . . Al Capone”: Contemporaneous notes, author’s files. “The most powerful . . . needed”: State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, February 25, 2010, WikiLeaks. Views within I.S.A.F. about dealing with A.W.K.: Interviews with multiple participants, then and later.
9.
Quotations from a contemporaneous interview with a senior U.S. military officer familiar with the exchange.
10. “Sort of unfortunate fact . . .”: Author’s interview. “Intelligence collectors will have a focus”: State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, February 25, 2010, WikiLeaks.
11. “A short, professional”: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 388. Reggie Love, scene with Petraeus: Interviews with former Obama administration officials involved.
12. C.O.P. design: Interview with Major Kevin Moyer, combat engineer, Second Combat Brigade. “From six kilometers . . .”: Interview with Spears.
13. S-2’s mapping and analytical work: Interviews with Kandarian and Gayler.
14. Interview with Mandel.
15. All quotations, interview with Strickland.
16. Ibid.
17. Interviews with Strickland and other members of the unit.
18. Interviews with Moyer and Kandarian.
19. Ibid.
20. Unclassified PowerPoint slide decks about the Strike tour.
21. “Secure the People . . .”: Ibid. Exercises at Freedom Town: Interviews with multiple soldiers and officers in the Strike task force.
22. Interviews with multiple participants in the compensation and arbitration system, including Kandarian.
23. Interview with Motupalli.
24. Ibid.
25. From a recorded Oval Office conversation on August 3, 1972. http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/4006748.
26. Author’s interviews with White House and N.A.T.O. officials.
27. This account is drawn from the author’s interviews with more than half a dozen European and American senior military officers within I.S.A.F., contemporaneous and retrospective, as well as with N.A.T.O. diplomats and senior Afghan security officials who worked with Petraeus during 2010.
28. Ibid. Mock cable: Author’s files.
29. All quotations, author’s interviews.
30. Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink, p. 106.
31. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records.
32. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records.
33. Interview with Strickland.
34. Interview with Kandarian and Strike task force PowerPoint briefing slides from 2010 and 2011.
35. Interview with Hopper.
Chapter Twenty-seven: Kayani 3.0
1. September 13, quotations: Interviews with participants and contemporary records. Gates, Duty, p. 501, quotes from the State paper but places a discussion of its categories of corruption in December. He also gives Hillary Clinton personal credit for redrafting the analysis, which he considered “the best I had ever seen on the topic.” It is possible that the September paper was revised during the autumn and reviewed again in December, but the author is confident it was first submitted and debated at the September 13 N.S.C. meeting.
2. Ibid. In his memoir, Gates does not report his exchange with Panetta in the Situation Room, but acknowledges, “We ran into a stone wall named Panetta. The C.I.A. had its own reasons not to change our approach.” On his comparison of contracting to the Afghan drug trade, Gates was essentially correct. International military and aid spending constituted about 97 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product of about $15 billion. American spending was a large portion of that. The farm-gate price of Afghan opium in 2010 was in the range of $600 million to $800 million, according to the United Nations.
3. All quotations from interviews with participants and contemporary records.
4. Interviews with investigators in Kabul, December 2010. Dexter Filkins, “The Afghan Bank Heist,” The New Yorker, February 14, 2011, which estimated the missing sum at $900 million. Other examples: Interview with Thomas Creal, former forensic accountant, who worked for one of the Kabul-based investigative units. Also, interview with Zac Bookman, former legal adviser to the similar Shafafiyat investigative task force; Andrew Wright, a congressional investigator who studied Host Nation Trucking.
5. Interviews with investigators, ibid.
6. Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
7. Three threads, Cell meetings: Interviews with multiple U.S. and other N.A.T.O. officials involved. Lute and quotations: Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
8. The New York Times, September 27, 2010.
9. Interviews with multiple U.S. and other N.A.T.O. officials involved.
10. Mullen and Kayani on his extension: Interviews with senior U.S. and Pakistani military officers. Kayani announced in November 2010 that he would stay on for three more years. “They beat the Russians . . .”: Author’s interview with Cameron Munter. The author was able to review a copy of the October white paper and take notes. The summary of its contents and the background of Kayani’s delivery of it to Obama is also informed by interviews with more than half a dozen U.S. officials who read the paper.
11. All quotations from the author’s notes from the document, ibid.
12. “We’re sending him a bill . . .”: From interviews with participants and contemporary records.
13. Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink, chapter 6, provided an early account of the meeting and its context.
14. The quotations from interviews with participants and contemporary records. Nabi and the C.I.A.: Associated Press, May 27, 2015.
15. Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
16. Holbrooke to Clinton: Memo in author’s files. December 9: Interview with Abramowitz.
17. Clinton, Hard Choices, p. 148.
18. Gates, Duty, p. 500.
19. Interviews with multiple participants.
20. All quotations, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/statement-president-afghanistan-pakistan-annual-review.
Chapter Twenty-eight: Hostages
1. This summary is drawn from interviews with several senior Obama administration officials who worked directly with Pasha during this period.
2. This summary is drawn from interviews with several senior Pakistani officials, intelligence officers, and military officers who worked closely with the Americans during this period.
3. Interviews with two former officials familiar with the document.
4. Interviews with Obama administration officials.
5. Interviews with Akbar. He is a former commercial lawyer trained in Britain who served as an investigator for the National Accountability Bureau, an anticorruption arm of the Musharraf government. Later, however, he moved into human rights work with the independent British-based organization Reprieve. There, Akbar filed strategic litigation in Pakistan on behalf of C.I.A. drone victims, the types of lawsuits common in international human rights promotion strategies worldwide. Akbar said when his work gained press attention, I.S.I. officers visited him to ask what he was doing, but that he convinced them his human rights work was in Pakistan’s interests and they left him alone. He said he had no contact with I.S.I. before naming Bank in his lawsuit and that he reached that decision on his own, in collaboration with Reprieve colleagues, after obtaining Bank’s name from local journalists. Bank’s departure on Morell’s plane: Greg Miller, The Washington Post, May 5, 2016.
6. Interviews with senior Obama administration officials.
7. Interview with the State Department official.
8. From contemporaneous interviews with two senior Obama administration officials, who had worked for many years in Pakistan and continued to travel the country during the “surge” period.
9. Interviews with Smith and Munter. In 2015, the U.S. embassy in Islamabad said that it was building a compound of about 625,000 square feet. When contacted in 2017, a State spokesperson said the finished compound would occupy 43 acres and include 1,700,000 square feet of “office, support and residential space.” According to the Pakistan Tribune, the c
ompound could accommodate 5,000 personnel.
10. Interviews with two U.S. intelligence officials familiar with Davis’s assignment. The evidence collected from his car by Pakistani police supports their account that in addition to his core work as a security officer for case officer meetings with reporting agents, Davis also did at least some independent surveillance work typical of black-bag contractors used by the C.I.A. in difficult environments.
11. Inventory of Davis’s possessions: Police files provided to the author by Pakistani police. The shooting: Davis’s written account provided to the Pakistani police after his arrest and interviews with several Pakistani police investigators.
12. Police files and interviews with investigators, ibid.
13. Base chief: Interviews with U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
14. Interview with Mejaz Rehman, a brother of the victim.
15. Interviews with Pakistani police investigators.
16. Ibid. Currency and pistol pouch: Pakistani police files provided to the author. “Seeing the situation”: Davis’s written statement. “This is not a witch hunt . . .”: Interview with Hameed.
17. Interviews with three former senior U.S. officials involved.
18. Police files, interview with Hameed and other police investigators and Pakistani officials involved in the case.
19. Interview with Haqqani.
20. “Is he your boy?”: Interview with a Pakistani intelligence officer involved. Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife, recounts a closely similar exchange, p. 264.
21. Panetta, Worthy Fights, p. 299. Inclined to think I.S.I. knew: From Panetta’s interviews following his memoir’s publication, particularly with 60 Minutes.
22. Interviews with Obama administration officials, some contemporaneous with the drafting of the reply memo. Obama and Munter: Interview with Munter.
23. Interviews with several Obama administration officials involved.
24. Ibid.
25. Text of Clinton’s remarks: http://kabul.usembassy.gov/sp-021811.html.
26. All quotations from interviews with participants and contemporary records.
