The sophistication made Andrew uneasy. To consider these fanatics as ignorant was a lethal mistake. They learned exponentially and seemed dangerously more complex every day.
He couldn’t help thinking of the simplicity of an interrogation technique favored during his father’s youth in the 1950s. Back then, a prisoner was injected with Sodium Pentothal or one of the other so-called truth serums. This relaxed a detainee to such a degree that his mental discipline was compromised, in theory making him vulnerable to questioning. But the process was often like trying to get information from a drunk. Fantasy, exaggeration, and fact became indistinguishable. Needing clarity and reliability, interrogators developed other methods.
* * * *
In his room, Andrew sat at his desk, activated the laptop computer, and watched an image appear. Transmitted from a hidden camera, it showed the prisoner in his cell. In keeping with Andrew’s instructions, the cot had been removed. The barred opening in the door was covered. A thin blanket lay on the concrete floor. The subject’s arms had been unshackled. He rubbed his chafed wrists. Now that he was alone, he confirmed Andrew’s suspicions by looking around warily, no longer fixing his gaze toward a spot on a wall.
Andrew pressed a button on the laptop’s keyboard and subtly increased the glare of the overhead lights in the cell. The change was so imperceptible that the subject couldn’t notice. During the next four days, the intensity would continue to increase until the glare was blinding, but no moment in the gradually agonizing change would be perceptible.
Andrew pressed another button and reduced the cell’s temperature a quarter of a degree. Again, the change was too small for the prisoner to notice, but during the next four days, the damp chill in the compartment would become extreme.
The subject sat in a corner with his back against the wall. In a moment, his eyes closed, perhaps in meditation.
Can’t allow that, Andrew thought. He pressed a third button, which activated a siren in the prisoner’s cell. On the screen, the prisoner jerked his eyes open. Startled, he looked up at the ceiling, where the siren was located. For now, the siren was at its lowest setting. It lasted only three seconds. But over the next four days, at unpredictable intervals, it would be repeated, each time louder and longer.
The prisoner would be given small amounts of bread and water to keep his strength at a sufficient level to prevent him from passing out. But the toilet in his cell would stop functioning, his wastes accumulating, their stench adding to his other sensory ordeals.
Andrew was reminded of the story his father had told him long ago on the sailboat. In his father’s case, there had been various increasing challenges to his perceptions. In the prisoner’s case, there would be increasing assaults to his perceptions. He would soon lose his sense of time. Minutes would feel like hours, and hours would feel like days. The intensifying barrage of painful stimuli would tear away his psychological defenses, leaving him so overwhelmed, disoriented, and worn down that he’d reveal any secret if only he could sleep.
* * * *
The prisoner lasted three and a half days. The sporadic faint siren eventually became a prolonged wail that forced him to put his hands over his ears and scream. Of course, his scream could not be heard amid the siren. Only the O of his mouth communicated the anguished noise escaping from him. The eventual searing glare of the lights changed to a pulsing light-dark, light-dark strobe effect that made the prisoner scrunch his eyes shut, straining to protect them. The thin blanket he’d been allowed was merely an attempt to give him false hope, for as the cold intensified, seeping up from the concrete floor and into his bones, the blanket gave him no protection. He huddled uselessly under it, unable to stop shivering.
* * * *
Again, Mr. Able and the other two guards entered the cell. Again, Andrew and the interpreter stood in the open doorway.
The prisoner twitched, this time definitely affected by Andrew’s size.
“When and where will the attack occur?” Andrew asked. “Does the attack involve smallpox? If so, how did your group obtain it? How will the attack be carried out? Tell me, and this is what I’ll do.” Andrew took a remote control from his suit-coat pocket and pressed a button that lowered the lights to a pleasant glow.
“I’ll also shut off the siren,” Andrew said. “I’ll make the room’s temperature comfortable. I’ll allow you to sleep. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sleep? Sleep is the greatest pleasure. Sleep will refresh you.”
Hugging himself to keep from shaking, the prisoner confessed. Because he hadn’t slept for almost four days, the information wasn’t always clear. Andrew needed to rephrase questions and prompt him numerous times, on occasion reactivating the siren and the throbbing lights to jolt his nerves. In the end, Andrew learned all that he wanted, and the prisoner no longer avoided looking at him. With a beseeching gaze, the desperate man told him what he needed, and the movement of his red, swollen, sleep-deprived eyes told Andrew that he wasn’t lying.
The target was New York City. The attack did involve smallpox. In four days, at five p.m. on numerous subway platforms, aerosol canisters that looked like hair-spray dispensers would be taken from backpacks. Their tops would be twisted, then returned to the backpacks. Their pressurized air would be vented through a tube in each backpack, dispersing the virus among the crowd. The victims wouldn’t know about the attack until days later when symptoms of the disease began to appear, but by then, the victims would have spread the virus much farther.
As Andrew hurried toward a scrambler-equipped satellite radio to report what he’d learned, he heard muffled screams coming from another cell. Water splashed. Disturbed by the significance of the sounds, Andrew ran to an open doorway through which he saw a man strapped to a board. The board was tilted so that the man’s head was lower than his feet. His head was in a brace so that he couldn’t turn it from side to side. He was naked, except for his underwear. His features were covered by a cloth, but the brown color of his skin matched that of the prisoner Andrew had interrogated, making Andrew conclude that this man, too, was an Iraqi.
Mr. Able stood over this new prisoner, pouring water onto his covered face. The prisoner made a gagging sound. He squirmed desperately, barely able to move.
“Our team in Paris caught the guy who escaped,” the guard told Andrew, then poured more water over the prisoner’s face. “He arrived while you were questioning the other prisoner.”
“Stop,” Andrew said.
“You took almost four days. At the start, I told you I could get someone to confess in two hours. But the truth is, all I really need is ten minutes.”
What Andrew watched helplessly was called waterboarding. The immobilized prisoner was subjected to a heavy stream of water over his face. The soggy cloth on his nose and mouth added to the weight of the water and made breathing even more difficult. The cloth covered his eyes and increased his terror because he couldn’t see to anticipate when more water would strike him. The incline guaranteed that the water would rush into his nostrils.
Unable to expel the water, the prisoner kept gagging, relentlessly subjected to the sensation of drowning. Andrew knew of cases in which prisoners did in fact drown. Other times, panic broke their sanity. Intelligence operatives who allowed themselves to be waterboarded in an effort to understand the experience were seldom able to bear even a minute of it. Those prisoners who were eventually set free reported that the panic they endured created lifelong traumas that made it impossible for them to look at a rain shower or even at water flowing from a tap.
In this case, the prisoner thrashed with such force that Andrew was convinced he would dislocate his limbs.
“Okay, asshole,” Mr. Able said through a translator. He yanked the drenched cloth from the victim’s face.
Andrew was appalled to see a section of plastic wrap stretched over the prisoner’s mouth. The only way the man could breathe was through his nose, from which water and snot erupted as he fought to clear his nostrils.
“Here’
s your chance not to drown.” The guard yanked the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s mouth. “Which subway system’s going to be attacked?”
The prisoner spat water. He gasped for air, his chest heaving.
“Speak up, jerk-off. I haven’t got all day.”
The prisoner made a sound as if he might vomit.
“Fine.” Mr. Able stretched the plastic wrap across the prisoner’s mouth. He threw the dripping cloth over his face, picked up another container of water, and poured.
With his feet tilted above him, the prisoner squirmed and gagged insanely as water cascaded onto the smothering cloth and into his nostrils.
“One last time, pal.” Again, the guard yanked the cloth and the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s face. “Answer my question, or you’ll drown. What subway system’s going to be attacked?”
“Paris,” the prisoner managed to say.
“You won’t like it if I find out you’re lying.”
“Paris.”
“Wait right there, chum. Don’t go away.” The guard left the prisoner strapped to the board and proceeded along the corridor to the man in the other cell.
“No,” Andrew said. He hurried after the guard, and what he saw when he reached the cell filled him with dismay. Guards had stripped the first prisoner and strapped him to a board, tilting his head down. A cloth covered his face.
“Stop,” Andrew said.
When he tried to intervene, two other guards grabbed him, dragging him back. Frantic, Andrew strained to pull free, but suddenly the barrel of a pistol was rammed painfully into his back, and he stopped resisting.
“I keep getting radio calls from nervous, important people,” Mr. Able said. “They keep asking what the hell’s taking so long. A lot of people will die soon if we don’t get the right information. I tell those nervous, important people that you’ve got your special way of doing things, that you don’t think my way’s reliable, that you think a prisoner’ll tell me anything just to make me stop.”
“It’s true,” Andrew said. “Panic makes him so desperate he’ll say anything he thinks you want to hear. The information isn’t dependable. But my way strips away his defenses. He doesn’t have any resistance by the time I finish with him. He doesn’t have the strength to lie.”
“Well, Mr. Baker, waterboarding makes them too terrified to lie.” The guard began pouring water over the prisoner’s face. It took less time than with the other man, because this prisoner was already exhausted from the sensory assaults that Andrew had subjected him to. He struggled. He gagged. As water poured over his downward-tilted face, rushing into his nostrils, he made choking sounds beneath the smothering cloth.
“What subway system’s going to be attacked?” Mr. Able demanded.
“He already told me!” Andrew shouted.
“Well, let’s hear what he answers this time.” The guard ripped the cloth and a strip of plastic wrap from his mouth.
“Paris,” the prisoner moaned.
Andrew gaped. “No. That’s not the answer he gave me. He told me New York City.”
“But now he says Paris, and so does the other guy. Paris is where they got captured. Why else would they be there if they weren’t going to attack it? Enough time’s been wasted. Our bosses are waiting for my report. We don’t need you here. I’m the interrogator they should have hired.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“No, you made the mistake when you took so damned long. We can’t waste any more time.”
Andrew struggled to pull away from the guards who held his arms so tightly they made his hands numb, restricting the flow of blood. “Those people you want to impress—tell them the target’s either New York or Paris. Tell them to increase surveillance at all the major subway systems but to emphasize New York and Paris. Four days from now. Thursday. Five p.m. local time. The attackers will wear backpacks. They’ll have hair-spray canisters inside the backpacks. The canisters hold the smallpox.”
“I haven’t started questioning these maggots about the other details,” Mr. Able said. “Right now, I just want to let everybody know the target area.”
“When they confessed to you, they never looked at you!” Andrew shouted.
“How the hell could they look at me when their heads were braced?” Mr. Able demanded. “I was standing to the side.”
“Their eyes. They should have angled their eyes toward you. They should have used their eyes to beg you to believe them. Instead they kept staring at the ceiling, the same way the first prisoner stared at the wall when I got here.”
“You expect me to believe that NLP shit? If they look to the left, they’re making things up. If they look to the right, they’re remembering something. So they look at the ceiling to keep me from knowing if they’re lying or not.”
“That’s the theory”
“Well, suppose what they’re remembering is a lie they rehearsed? Left. Right. None of it means anything.”
“The point is they think it means something. That’s why they won’t look at you. After three and a half days, when the man I interrogated was ready for questioning, he couldn’t stop looking at me. His eyes wouldn’t stop pleading for me to let him sleep. And he always looked to the right. Maybe he remembered a lie, but at least, his eyes didn’t tell me he was inventing something. The men you waterboarded, though, when they confessed, they didn’t give you a chance to learn anything from their eyes.”
“But ...” A sudden doubt made Mr. Able frown. “If you’re right, the only way that would work ...”
“. . . is if they were waterboarded other times. As part of their training,” Andrew said. “Once they adjusted to it, their trainer could condition them to control their eyes.”
“But the panic’s overwhelming. No one would agree to be waterboarded repeatedly.”
“Unless they welcome death.”
The stark words made the guard cock his head, threatened by Andrew’s logic.
Apparently the other guards reacted the same way. Confused, they released him. Feeling blood flow into his arms, Andrew stepped forward. “All these prisoners want is to die for their cause and go to paradise. They’re not afraid of death. They welcome it. How can waterboarding make them panic?”
A long moment passed. Mr. Able lowered his gaze toward the water and scum on the floor. “Report whatever the hell you want.”
“I will in a moment.” Andrew turned toward the other guards. “Who stuck the pistol into my back?”
The man on the right said, “I did. No hard feelings.”
“Wrong.” Andrew rammed the palm of his hand against the man’s face and shattered his nose.
* * * *
Four days later, shortly after five p.m. eastern standard time, Andrew received a radio message that five men with backpacks containing smallpox-dispersal cans had been arrested as they attempted to enter various sections of the New York City subway system. A weight seemed to fall from his chest. For the first time in a long while, he breathed freely. After the confidence with which he’d confronted Mr. Able, he’d begun to be troubled by doubts. So many lives depended on his skills. Given the sophistication of the prisoners, he’d been worried that, for once, he might have been fooled.
He was in Afghanistan now, conducting another sensory-assault interrogation. As before, the person usually in charge resented his intrusion and complained that he could get results much faster than Andrew did.
Andrew ignored him.
But on the eve of the third day of the interrogation, when Andrew was sure that his prisoner would soon lose all his psychological defenses and reveal what Andrew needed to know, he was again reminded of his father. He sat before the computer on his desk, watching the image of the prisoner, and he recalled that his father had sometimes been asked to go to the Agency’s training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia, where he taught operatives to extend the limits of their perceptions.
“It’s like most things. It involves practice,” his father had explained to Andrew. “For
old times’ sake, I made my students read The Ambassadors. I tried to distract them with blaring music. I inserted conversations behind the music. A layer at a time. After a while, the students learned to be more aware, to perceive many things at once.”
As Andrew studied the computer screen and pushed buttons that flashed the blinding lights in the prisoner’s cell while at the same time causing a siren to wail, he thought about the lesson that his father had said he took from that Henry James novel.
“Lambert Strether becomes increasingly aware as the novel progresses,” Andrew’s father had told him. “Eventually, Strether notices all sorts of things that he normally would have missed. Undertones in conversations. Overtones in the way someone looks at someone else. All the details in the way people dress and what those details say about them. He becomes a master of consciousness. The sentences dramatize that point. They get longer and more complicated as the novel progresses, as if matching Strether’s growing mind. I get the sense that James hoped those complicated sentences would make the reader’s mind develop as Strether’s does. But this is the novel’s point, Andrew. Never forget this, especially if you enter the intelligence profession, as I hope you will. For all his awareness, Strether loses. In the end, he’s outwitted. His confidence in his awareness destroys him. The day you become most sure of something, that’s the day you need to start doubting it. The essence of the intelligence profession is that you can never be aware enough, never be conscious enough, because your opponent is determined to be even more aware.”
Agents of Treachery Page 28
