sometimes wasn’t sufficient. Men would be putting themselves in harm’s way based on my best guess. I had to make sure it was as educated and objective as possible.
“Sir,” I told the colonel, “there is a ninety percent chance that Farris Yasin is not going to be there.”
Those were odds he was willing to take. With a hard-edged stare he told us, “I just want to make sure you realize that if you don’t want it, then we’ll do this hit ourselves.”
We returned to the house. It was the day before the Sooners’ game with Texas A&M, who had ruined our chances of an undefeated season the year before. I was more nervous about the outcome of that game than whether or not I had made the right decision about the hit: there was just no way that kid knew Farris Yasin. After another long night of interrogations, I finally crawled into bed. A few hours later, Bam Bam was shaking me by the shoulder.
“Eric,” he said. “I need you to go over to the MPs and pick up Farris Yasin.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming. I hoped I was. Aside from recommending a raid that becomes an ambush, the second most serious screwup is turning down a solid hit. I sat up in bed with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure what was worse: preventing the team from capturing one of the most wanted Al- Muslits on my own list, or having to face the colonel who had actually done the job against my advice.
Kelly offered to go over with me to the 4th ID compound to pick up the prisoner. “What am I going to say to the colonel?” I wondered as we made our way through the checkpoint.
“Don’t look at me,” Kelly replied. “I’m not the one who told him ninety percent.”
From then on, things only got worse. Farris Yasin was one of the hardest and most frustrating interrogations I’d ever conducted. I knew he was a hardened criminal, a street thug, and a gangster. I knew he was probably responsible for the deaths of more Americans than anyone I’d interrogated in that guesthouse. And I knew he had a wealth of information about the insurgency and the men who led it. He also knew that I knew who he was and what he was doing. He had absolutely zero motivation to cooperate.
On the other hand, I was nothing but motivated. I not only wanted everything that he could tell me, I also had something to prove. I was determined to make up for the serious mistake of not recommending the raid that had brought him in. I had to break him.
But I couldn’t. I realized what I was up against when, after an hour and a half, all that I’d gotten him to admit was his name. The next four hours were filled with endless repetitions of the same bullshit story: he hadn’t seen any of his family since before the war; he had no involvement with the insurgency or with anyone who did; he spent his days hunting birds. He didn’t blink an eye when I called him a liar and a terrorist and a shitbag or when I promised him that he’d never get out of prison while I was still alive. I got the feeling he was actually enjoying this battle of wills. It was a point of pride not to show fear or doubt or guilt.
The grinding interrogation went on all day. Trying to catch him in an inconsistency was pointless. Since he was telling me nothing to begin with, there was nothing for him to contradict. I wanted to hear about Izzecki, the kid who had turned him in, but knew better than to reveal that I had that information. Izzecki’s name never came up, despite my best efforts to lead Farris Yasin in that direction. There were other questions that I couldn’t ask. Who the hell was Izzecki, anyway? How did he know where Farris was? Why did he turn him in? I was convinced that the stories he had told about the insurgent leader being his best friend were lies. Nothing Farris was saying or not saying was changing my mind. But I couldn’t figure out what the connection between the two men might be.
Eight hours later I had still not gotten a single piece of useful information. I even tried confronting him with the man whose house he was hiding in. He’d also been rolled up in the raid. I pointed out small discrepancies between their stories.
“He’s scared,” Farris said smugly. “He wants to please you. He will say whatever lies he thinks you want to hear.”
At 1500 I was called out of the interrogation room. There were two men at the gate, Kelly informed me. They needed to talk to me right away.
“Who are they?” I asked. I was in no mood to deal with random walk-ins.
“Two Kurds,” Kelly replied. “They’re looking for you. They say you told them to come back when they found Radman Ibrahim. They’re telling us he’s in Hudaytha and will be there until tomorrow morning.”
That got my attention. These were obviously the same two Kurds that had been working as sources with Chris before he left. They had come back now, with the intelligence I’d sent them out to get: the location of one of the top Al-Muslits and a twelve-hour window in which to launch the raid. Suddenly, my luck was changing. The exhausting day I’d just spent questioning Farris Yasin for information was now moving in a whole other direction.
“What do you think?” one of the terps asked me as we went to talk to the Kurds. “Are these guys for real?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” I answered grimly, “but last night the MPs picked up Farris Yasin on a hit I turned down. If these two guys told me they
After a thorough debriefing I was convinced that the sources were telling the truth. A consultation with Bam Bam convinced him, too and the raid was quickly put together. This was turning out to be one of the busiest and most eventful nights of my tour in Tikrit. And I wasn’t even factoring in the OU–A&M game that was going on at the same time.
Two hours later, the shooters had left on the raid that would hopefully roll up Radman. I returned to Farris Yasin, this time bringing with me his young brother, Ahmed Yasin. Ahmed repeated everything he had told me earlier, especially about Farris being an active member of the insurgency, but once again the result was negligible. I wasn’t getting anywhere.
But I still had hopes for the unfolding raid. Taking a well-deserved break from Farris, I returned to the house and went directly to the room the team used as an office. As I entered, Kelly, who was crouched at the radio, jumped up.
“Jackpot!” he shouted. “They got him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. At that point, I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
“That was Bam Bam,” he replied, pointing to the radio. “He wouldn’t call if he wasn’t sure.”
I let myself breathe again. “When will they be back? When can I start interrogating Radman?”
“Well,” Kelly said hesitantly. “That’s sort of an issue.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean an ‘issue’?”
“Hudaytha is pretty far west from here,” he explained. “We had to do the hit with our team in Baghdad. We drove out, but they came in on choppers. They’re going to fly Radman back to BIAP with them.”
My heart sank. “That’s a huge mistake, Kelly,” I protested. “They don’t even know who he is. I don’t want Radman because he’s a bad guy. I want him because of what he can tell me. He can lay out the entire insurgency here in Tikrit. He might even lead us to Saddam.”
“It’s a logistical issue,” Kelly said with a shrug. “Bam Bam’s trying to get it straightened out, but they may want to keep him for a few days. I’ll try to get him back here for you as soon as I can.”
We were interrupted by the radio. A message was coming in from the returning team:
“What do you know,” Kelly said. “I guess Bam Bam talked Baghdad into letting us have Radman after all.”
I leapt up and rushed back to the guesthouse, stopping long enough to get a few No-Doze from my kit. I’d been up so long now, I knew I’d need something to help keep me alert for the interrogation with my new High Value prisoner.
When, after a half hour, nobody had showed up for the interrogation, I went out looking for the operators who would be escorting Radman. I ran into Bam Bam coming down the path.
“Did you get my message?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Yes,” I said anxiously. “Where is he? I’m ready to get started.”
“Oh, I was just messing with you,” Bam Bam replied, his smile turning into a grin. “They took him to Baghdad. It wasn’t my choice. I knew you’d be pissed.”
Bam Bam had gotten me good. As I walked back to the house, deflated and discouraged, I felt the No-Doze starting to kick in. It was going to be a long and useless night.
