of basic information. If you do that, they’ll realize they’re giving you information you don’t know. At best they’ll simply slow down, but their train of thought will be ruined.
You have to convince the detainee that you know all about him, and that any lie will be easily uncovered. To do this you plan the interrogation around what you know. You prepare different hypothetical situations to predict what the suspect might say and where the evidence can lead, thereby lessening the chances of the suspect’s taking you by surprise.
The interrogation room in Aden was oddly shaped. It was divided into two; a wall with a window-shaped gap was in the middle. Interrogators sat on one side of the wall and suspects on the other, and we spoke through the gap.
Badawi was plump, with a potbelly and a round face, dark eyes, black hair, and a full black beard. I read him the Arabic version of the Miranda warning, which he said he understood, and he waived his right to remain silent. He said that he had nothing to hide.
He was initially uncooperative, however. While he admitted to training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and purchasing a boat, he claimed that he thought it was for business and commerce and denied any knowledge of the attack. We could see that his “admission” followed the standard al-Qaeda counterinterrogation process, a method we were familiar with from the Manchester Manual. The manual advised al-Qaeda operatives to admit things they knew the interrogator knew, giving the impression that they were cooperating, while withholding the real truth and any new information.
I asked Badawi about Khallad and Nashiri. He admitted to knowing them, and as he was pretending to cooperate, he gave me more information on them—details that he thought were unimportant. But often these small, “unimportant” details that suspects give are very useful to us, as they were in this instance. Badawi told us that Nashiri and Khallad were intimate with bin Laden. “Is Osama bin Laden involved in the
“I’m not going to tell you that bin Laden was involved so you can write in the paper that Badawi said bin Laden was involved.”
“Do you think we’re waiting for you to tell us that?”
After that, Badawi tried downplaying Khallad’s role, claiming that Khallad wasn’t in Yemen and had just introduced him to Nashiri via a letter of introduction.
We pretended to “accept” whatever Badawi told us, trying to draw out some more details that might help us. Badawi at one point mentioned that Nashiri had him help purchase a truck to pick up a boat. Later we found the dealership at which the sale had been made and searched the records of the transaction. An ID had been submitted by the buyer: it featured a picture of Nashiri over the name Sa’eed al-Mansouri. Thus we learned another alias that Nashiri used.
When I was asking Badawi questions, Ken sat silently next to me, as he didn’t speak Arabic. But whenever he thought of something I should ask Badawi, he would write a note on a sticky pad and pass it to me. Badawi did not know what the notes were for, and I saw him repeatedly glancing at them. He seemed unnerved by them. I guessed it confused him why Ken never opened his mouth and just passed notes.
“I see you looking at these notes,” I said. “You’re wondering what’s written on this paper?” I held up one of the notes, with the blank side facing him.
“No, no,” Badawi replied, his face turning red like a schoolboy caught cheating. “No, I wasn’t.” He paused and then continued, “It’s your business, I don’t care.” He tried to look disinterested, but his eyes kept darting back to the notes.
“Well,” I continued, “I’ll tell you anyway. My friend here is like a human polygraph machine. He’s an expert in human behavior. And every time you lie, he passes me a note telling me that you’re lying.” Ken had no idea what I was saying and just stared at Badawi, unsmiling, as before. This only seemed to unnerve Badawi even more.
From then on, whenever Badawi was going to lie, he would either move away from the window and attempt to maneuver himself into an angle that would prevent Ken from seeing him, or he would look to see whether Ken was reacting. Instantly we knew he was lying. Badawi himself became a human polygraph machine.
“What passport did you use to travel to Afghanistan?” I asked Badawi.
“My passport,” he replied.
“In your name?”
“Yes, in my name.”
“Which name?”
“Jamal.”
“Jamal what?”
Puzzled, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“Is it Jamal al-Badawi, or is it one of the other names you use? Is it the name you used to travel to Bosnia?” Here I was guessing, but almost everyone we questioned had a second (fraudulent) Yemeni passport.
Badawi hesitated. I looked at Ken, and Badawi fidgeted. “Look, I’ve got a copy in our other office of the passport in the other name you use. Do you want me to get it?” I asked.
“No, no, it’s Jamal al-Tali.”
I had been bluffing, knowing that al-Qaeda terrorists like Badawi like to think they’re outwitting you. They don’t want to be caught lying. It’s both a game to them—one they want to win—and a question of honor, as they don’t like being called liars. As self-proclaimed religious Muslims, it’s embarrassing for them to be caught lying.
The PSO interrogator present told me during a break that he was shocked that Badawi had admitted to using the name. Now we had an admission of one of his aliases, and we put out a search to see where the passport had been used. We found that a pager had been bought under the name, and we questioned Badawi about it. He admitted that it was for the attack: he would be paged when the attack was about to be under way so that he could record it, using a videotape provided by Nashiri for the purpose.
Bit by bit, we teased out details about the operation from Badawi. Throughout, he tried minimizing his own role. He consistently told us that it was Nashiri who had both provided the videotape and instructed him to buy the pager. He had passed both duties on to Quso, who became his deputy for the operation; he had trained Quso in how to use the video and the pager. Quso had not recorded the attack, however, Badawai claimed, because he had overslept.
Al-Qaeda members commonly had the same problems with timelines that Yemenis did. Part of the reason is cultural: in the West we are trained to think in a linear manner, and we learn that the truth can be arrived at by following a series of logical steps. Al-Qaeda members, however, are greatly influenced by conspiracy theories, and they suspend their critical thinking. Rather than logic, they have a culture based on relationships and impressions, and there is considerable willingness, on their part, to accept conspiracy theories to explain certain events. Bin Laden capitalized on this by reiterating long-standing assertions that America, Israel, and the West were trying to subjugate the Arab and Muslim world and destroy the Islamic faith.
Concomitant with pledging
Going through events in great detail eventually trips up most liars. At times it felt, as John put it more than once, like pulling teeth. We would ask a series of questions and trap Badawi in a lie. When he was caught or felt that he was about to be caught, he would change his story slightly, inserting more of the truth. He also got angry sometimes when he was caught in a lie, and then he would spill more information. The process required patience; interrogators can’t show frustration. That would only encourage the detainee to hold out, thinking the interrogator would soon give up. Instead you have to show you’re not in a rush, and are prepared to spend as long as it takes. Persistence is of paramount importance. A mistake some people make is giving an interrogation a fixed time slot. Doing so only alerts the suspect to the fact that all he needs to do is outlast you.
One day of interest was January 3, when the five young fishermen had reported finding the boat on the beach. It seemed to us that al-Qaeda had been planning a second attack, but that something had gone wrong. We checked with the U.S. Navy to determine what ships had been in the area at the time and found that on the night of
