Read Online How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander - Free Book Online
Authors: Matthew Alexander
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we’ve gleaned from the detainees has yielded nothing that brings us closer to Zarqawi. The pressure mounts in tandem with the chaos on the street. Zarqawi’s momentum is growing as the suicide bombings increase, as well as the retaliatory attacks, and all-out civil war seems imminent. We need to find a way to climb Al Qaida’s chain of command.
There’s more at play amongst the ’gators than the need to get the job done. I’ve sat with David in the Hollywood room, monitoring interrogations. It doesn’t take long to discover we have a deep division amongst us. There is the old guard, who were at Guantánamo and did previous tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. They believe in the fear-and-controlmethods but now they’re being forced to play by the rules. Then there is my group and a few other ’gators who are starting to embrace our new methods.
One morning, I arrive at the ’gator pit early. The night-shift ’gators are still busy typing up their reports, and most of the desks are still occupied.
I spot Ann pecking away at a keyboard. I sit down next to her. She looks up from her flat-screen monitor and smiles.
“How’d it go last night?” I ask.
“Frustrating. I’ve got this operations guy I know has to be important, but I can’t get through to him. He’s done a lot of really bad things, and he’s resigned to his fate.”
“Inshallah.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Have you shown him any sympathy?”
Ann shakes her head, “Not really. What do you have in mind?”
Lenny, a night-shift ’gator from New York City, overhears this and guffaws. “Fucking muj. Just show him who’s boss.”
I turn to look at him. Lenny’s an old-schooler, a veteran ’gator who got pulled out of Guantánamo and sent here, a fate that has left him thoroughly pissed off.
“What do you mean?” I ask him. Ann doesn’t look at him, just sets her jaw and looks grim.
“Well look, these muj won’t give you nothin’ unless youtake charge. Take the muj I’ve got right now. He’ll come around, believe me. Once he gets it through his thick skull that he’s going to hang.”
I’m annoyed. One thing we were taught back at Fort Huachuca was never to use derogatory terms to describe our detainees. Dehumanizing them is the first step down the slippery slope to torture. It also exposes Lenny’s ignorance; not all of the detainees here are true mujahideen.
I decide to ignore him. I turn back to Ann. “Your detainee is a Sunni, right?”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Yeah. And most of them have been terrorized by Shia militias like the Badr Corps and Mahdi Army. At least most of the ones I’ve met so far have been. If you show sympathy towards him because of this, maybe he’ll open up.”
Lenny guffaws again. “Sympathy won’t work. Control 101 is the first lesson in interrogation. They’re the enemy for Christ’s sake.”
I go to my desk to retrieve a binder. I hand it to Ann. “Look, I’ve put together some information about the Shia militias. It may be worth a shot.”
Ann takes the binder and thanks me. Lenny looks disgusted. I hear him mutter, “Sympathy for a haji. Right.”
The old ways die hard.
Later that morning, David asks me to sit with him in the Hollywood room and observe the afternoon’s interrogations. Steve and Tom are slated to question a detainee we think is the highest-level Al Qaida operative in our system. Steve’s a devotee of the new techniques, one of our group who went through training at Fort Huachuca with me. Tom is a father of four with a gray beard who gives the impressionthat he is a decade older than his thirty six years. Tom is old-school. He understands control and dominance but in the past has seemed more open to the new ideas than some of the other veteran ’gators.
This should be an interesting match. I put on a set of headphones and tune in as the detainee enters the interrogation booth. The prisoner, like Zaydan, is an imam who preaches at a Baghdad mosque. He’s fat and
There’s more at play amongst the ’gators than the need to get the job done. I’ve sat with David in the Hollywood room, monitoring interrogations. It doesn’t take long to discover we have a deep division amongst us. There is the old guard, who were at Guantánamo and did previous tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. They believe in the fear-and-controlmethods but now they’re being forced to play by the rules. Then there is my group and a few other ’gators who are starting to embrace our new methods.
One morning, I arrive at the ’gator pit early. The night-shift ’gators are still busy typing up their reports, and most of the desks are still occupied.
I spot Ann pecking away at a keyboard. I sit down next to her. She looks up from her flat-screen monitor and smiles.
“How’d it go last night?” I ask.
“Frustrating. I’ve got this operations guy I know has to be important, but I can’t get through to him. He’s done a lot of really bad things, and he’s resigned to his fate.”
“Inshallah.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Have you shown him any sympathy?”
Ann shakes her head, “Not really. What do you have in mind?”
Lenny, a night-shift ’gator from New York City, overhears this and guffaws. “Fucking muj. Just show him who’s boss.”
I turn to look at him. Lenny’s an old-schooler, a veteran ’gator who got pulled out of Guantánamo and sent here, a fate that has left him thoroughly pissed off.
“What do you mean?” I ask him. Ann doesn’t look at him, just sets her jaw and looks grim.
“Well look, these muj won’t give you nothin’ unless youtake charge. Take the muj I’ve got right now. He’ll come around, believe me. Once he gets it through his thick skull that he’s going to hang.”
I’m annoyed. One thing we were taught back at Fort Huachuca was never to use derogatory terms to describe our detainees. Dehumanizing them is the first step down the slippery slope to torture. It also exposes Lenny’s ignorance; not all of the detainees here are true mujahideen.
I decide to ignore him. I turn back to Ann. “Your detainee is a Sunni, right?”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Yeah. And most of them have been terrorized by Shia militias like the Badr Corps and Mahdi Army. At least most of the ones I’ve met so far have been. If you show sympathy towards him because of this, maybe he’ll open up.”
Lenny guffaws again. “Sympathy won’t work. Control 101 is the first lesson in interrogation. They’re the enemy for Christ’s sake.”
I go to my desk to retrieve a binder. I hand it to Ann. “Look, I’ve put together some information about the Shia militias. It may be worth a shot.”
Ann takes the binder and thanks me. Lenny looks disgusted. I hear him mutter, “Sympathy for a haji. Right.”
The old ways die hard.
Later that morning, David asks me to sit with him in the Hollywood room and observe the afternoon’s interrogations. Steve and Tom are slated to question a detainee we think is the highest-level Al Qaida operative in our system. Steve’s a devotee of the new techniques, one of our group who went through training at Fort Huachuca with me. Tom is a father of four with a gray beard who gives the impressionthat he is a decade older than his thirty six years. Tom is old-school. He understands control and dominance but in the past has seemed more open to the new ideas than some of the other veteran ’gators.
This should be an interesting match. I put on a set of headphones and tune in as the detainee enters the interrogation booth. The prisoner, like Zaydan, is an imam who preaches at a Baghdad mosque. He’s fat and
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