in deep shock to be in U.S. custody. For years they had been told by bin Laden that the United States was a cowardly country whose soldiers would flee when attacked. The al-Qaeda leader would cite the U.S. withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia following attacks as examples of American “cowardice.” But after 9/11, when we invaded Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s rhetoric was exposed as hollow. The image of al-Qaeda’s leaders (rather than U.S. soldiers) scurrying into hiding places, and even fleeing Afghanistan, turned perceptions upside down. This made al-Qaeda members fear the United States for the first time, and made them more likely to cooperate than when they thought al-Qaeda had the upper hand.
The image of a confident and strong America was compromised when the Guantanamo guards were ordered to chain the detainees’ hands and feet so they could barely move. When a detainee needed to be moved from his cell to an interrogation room, two guards would almost carry him, sometimes even putting him on a wheeled stretcher. “This actually plays into al-Qaeda’s rhetoric and shows them that we are indeed terrified of them,” I told the CITF. “We need to do it securely and safely, but this is overkill. It’s a mistake.”
In each interrogation I conducted, I had the guards take off the detainee’s chains. I wanted to show that I wasn’t afraid of the person I was interrogating. Taking off the chains also furthered the process, as detainees reacted well when treated with dignity.
“Why are you being nice to them?” one guard asked me in a sneering tone.
“I’m playing mind games with them,” I told him, “playing on their notions of respect and dignity. When I treat them well, they feel they have to be polite and responsive, and in return I get the intelligence I need. For that, I’ll be nice.”
One day General Dunlavey called me, along with the CIA chief [2 words redacted], Matt, to his office. He told us that FBI director Robert Mueller would be arriving shortly and that he would like us to accompany him and the director on a tour. I had never met Mueller before; he was appointed just before 9/11, and I had been largely outside the United States on missions since his appointment.
When the director arrived, I had just come out of an interrogation and was wearing cargo pants and a polo shirt and had a beard, so I didn’t look like an FBI agent. As we took him around the base, Dunlavey periodically asked me to explain things to Mueller, and I noticed the director looking at me strangely, as if he was trying to work out who I was. At the end of the tour, Dunlavey turned to the director and said: “Now that you’ve seen the operation, let me introduce you to the people who are making it happen.” Rather than have a general introduce Mueller to one of his own agents, I quickly said: “Ali Soufan, FBI, nice to meet you sir,” before Dunlavey could finish.
“You’re Ali?” the director asked, and his eyebrows shot up. He looked me up and down again.
“Yes, sir.”
“I should tell you that I just came from a trip overseas, and in many countries, when we landed, the foreign services would ask me, ‘How is Ali doing?’ I’ve heard a lot of great things about you, so I’m very happy to meet you.”
“That’s a great honor, sir. Thank you.”
We continued on to the FBI house at Gitmo, where all our agents worked and lived, and gathered in the living room, where several rows of folding chairs had been set up. Matt, the CIA chief of base, was also invited to come, and he and I stood at the back of the room. No one sat in the front two rows, and as the director was about to begin his talk, he asked, “No one wants to sit in the front?” There was silence. “Where’s Ali?” he asked, looking around, and when he spotted me at the back he beckoned me to the front: “Come sit here.” I guessed that my name was one of the few he knew.
One evening in late June 2002, while I was working in FBI headquarters in DC—I was splitting my time between helping at Gitmo and other operations—Dan Coleman approached my desk. “Ali, do you know that there is a Salim Hamdan in Gitmo? Isn’t he Abu Jandal’s brother-in-law?”
“Seriously? Gitmo?”
“Yes, I’ve just been sorting through detainee files. Here’s his arrest photo,” Dan said, handing it to me.
“So this is the famous Saqr,” I said, studying the photo.
Abu Jandal had once told us that he only knew Saqr by his alias. “Come on,” I had told him, “are you really going to claim you don’t know your own brother-in-law’s real name?” Abu Jandal had blushed, caught in a lie. He had no idea how we knew of their relationship.
“It’s Salim Hamdan,” he’d said.
I went to see Pat D’Amuro and explained what I’d just learned, and we agreed that I would go interview Hamdan. At the time, there was no “fly team” (a specialized rapid response team) set up to interrogate new detainees, so Pat let me take whoever I wanted. I chose George Crouch, who had worked with me on the
Bill Corbett, the Gitmo case agent at the time, met us when we landed. “I know it’s late,” I told him, “but we want to go straight to interview Hamdan.”
“There’s a problem,” he said. “The CIA have suddenly decided to interrogate him right now.”
“What suddenly pricked their interest?”
“I know,” Bill replied, “there’s something strange going on. Hamdan has been in custody for months, and the CIA has had plenty of time to interrogate him, but only now, when they heard that the FBI specifically asked to interview him and that HQ was sending you to the island, did they say they wanted to speak to him.”
“Let’s go to Hamdan anyway,” I said. “I want to see what’s going on.”
We went straight to the interrogation room and asked the CIA interrogators inside to come out. One was a good friend whom I had worked alongside in the past, and we exchanged pleasantries. “Listen,” I told him, “we’ve flown all the way from Washington to speak to Hamdan. We can do it together if you want, but this guy is important to us.”
He readily agreed, but his colleague, a retired CIA officer working for the agency as a contractor, objected. When he wouldn’t listen to reasoning, we took the matter to Matt, the CIA chief [2 words redacted]. We explained the situation and why we wanted to speak to Hamdan, and he sided with us and offered to help however he could. The CIA contractor argued back, but Matt had seniority.
“This is becoming a bad pattern with the CIA,” George said to me, as we walked from Matt’s office to the interrogation room. He had recently interviewed Abu Zubaydah’s partner Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby. Liby had been captured by Pakistani officials toward the end of November 2001 while trying to flee Afghanistan. He was handed over to the U.S. military and taken to Bagram Airfield, in Afghanistan’s Parvan province. George and another of our team members, Russell Fincher, interrogated him in multiple sessions, and Liby cooperated, giving intelligence that included details of a threat against the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. [13 words redacted]
During one session, Fred, the CIA officer who had caused problems in Jordan during the millennium investigation and had sent the faulty cables that had to be withdrawn, stormed into the room and began shouting at Liby, working hard [13 words redacted] “I don’t care what you’ve said about plots in Yemen. I want to know about plots [2 words redacted].”
George and Russell couldn’t believe it. Did Fred really think that thwarting attacks against the U.S. Embassy wasn’t important? Why was he disrupting the interrogation? Liby’s face also registered confusion. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking to George for guidance.
“If you don’t tell me about what you are planning [2 words redacted],” Fred told Liby, “I’m going to bring your mother here and fuck her in front of you.”
This was too much for Liby, and he turned away and refused to say another word to anyone. He was the internal emir of Khaldan and, in his mind, an important person; he wasn’t going to take such abuse. The interrogation stopped for the day.
The general in charge of Bagram was furious when he heard what had happened and banned Fred from the airfield. Fred, however, filed his own report, and shortly afterwards, the CIA secretly came and rendered Liby to a third country (the name is still classified). There, after being tortured, he described the “links” between al-Qaeda and Saddam, which was a complete fabrication.
According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on prewar intelligence on Iraq: “Postwar findings support the… February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa’ida associates with chemical and biological weapons… training in 2000.… Al-Liby told debriefers that he fabricated information while in U.S. custody to receive better treatment
