CAPTUS and Jacques

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“He has the social skills, the C/O skills, of some creature that lives in dark corners, snivels a lot, and fears people,” I said.

I had waited several days after my arrival at post before telling Peter I wanted and needed to be running the interrogation. I spoke to him one-on-one the morning after I had undercut Roger by characterizing him as “diseased.” I told Peter that Roger needed to go home—he was creating problems with liaison and was utterly incompetent as an interrogator.

Peter cocked his eye at my characterization, liking it, finding it amusing and colorful, almost inappropriate, but also agreeing with it and silently welcoming that someone spoke frankly and concurred with the way he himself clearly felt. Peter had by then assessed me to be a balanced, competent officer, although he was still wary.

He agreed to let me interrogate CAPTUS, impressing upon me the importance of the case, its sensitivity, and how careful I had to be to act appropriately toward liaison and to follow whatever guidance we received about the interrogation. I must keep him informed at all times of the slightest development and clear with him any step I intended to take, but I must not burden him with handholding issues and doubts. I understood. A good case officer, an experienced case officer, solves problems without taking them to the COS, but knows, too, when it is necessary to approach him. The COS needed this case off his hands. And that was why I was at post, anyway: Peter needed a solid officer to take over the case.

Peter looked hard at me. He was deadly serious and was clearly giving me an order.

“You will meet with me every morning to apprise me of developments. Got it?”

“Yes.”

I was enthused that I was being entrusted with one of the key operations in our efforts to detect, disrupt, and destroy al-Qa’ida. This work was significant, had a real impact on our national policy and American lives. We had all lived 9/11. I had seen the huge number of threat reports that arrived from around the world every day. It was sobering, at first view, stunning. Being engaged on issues of national importance was why I had joined the Agency. Even as a case officer in the CIA, one’s life and career often consisted of endless, insignificant routine.

The sunlight shone stark on the sidewalks and the sides of buildings, as we pulled out to drive to the first interrogation that I would conduct. The light whitewashed everything I saw. The tree leaves appeared a paler green than normal, the faded look objects have for me in the first moments of sight after I have had my eyes closed in the dark for some time. I have often experienced this perception of visual bleaching during intense experiences. I felt focused, alert.

I had thought about how I would interrogate CAPTUS from the moment I had been read into the case. Peter was right: I was not a trained interrogator. The CIA had none. We were case officers with various skills, but interrogating prisoners—“detainees” now in GWOT parlance—had nothing to do with our careers, until 9/11, and until our bosses poked their heads into our office doors on beautiful Indian Summer mornings. Then there was Wilmington’s “guidance,” which he had literally waved in my face, our new instructions from on high, from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney, to “use any means at our disposal” and to “take our gloves off, if you will.” We were in a war now; the circumstances differed, our orders were much more aggressive than anything the CIA had been involved in during my career, certainly since Vietnam. My work on the Sandinista-Contra war, and on the Kosovo war, even my work on Lebanese issues during the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, and on terrorist issues when on the CT office . . . we and I had done nothing like what we were now doing in the GWOT, and what I was about to do.

Many of the parked cars I passed were dusty. It had not rained for many days. I was glad that I was at the wheel and not being chauffeured. It gave me a sense of routine and control. Until today, I had been observing the interrogations, in forced passivity.

I would have our daily requirements to address: specific questions sent from Headquarters, or prepared by the interrogation team. That was straightforward, the same job I had been doing for two decades. I knew I would approach each session with the strategic objective of manipulating CAPTUS. My conception was that the conventionally accepted perception of “breaking” someone in an interrogation was probably misleading; I had almost never met a human who became abject, and completely surrendered all free will and any individual objectives. All human interactions, whether in negotiations, conversations with a child, or, I anticipated, interrogations of detainees, consisted of a dynamic that depended upon rapport and reading the other party’s motivations. I would seek to manipulate our nascent relationship, of course, get inside his head in ways he identified, and in ways he did not. I would be willing to stress him and disorient him.

But causing pain to pry out information? Torture? Physical torture? I would not do it. Yet, what was physical torture? I would accept, perhaps, manipulating one’s circadian rhythms, as I had experienced many years before in SERE training: disorienting and eliminating one’s sensory connections and reference points to the world, one’s sense of personal grounding. The unstated, operating assumption in our training had been that this contributed to making someone more willing to talk. But even about this I was uncertain. I had experienced it. It had very quickly made me confused, and frightened—I had rapidly begun to lose my sense of self, and of reality; it had not made me any more willing to cooperate with my interrogators. So did it serve its purpose? I doubted it did. But I did not know, and I found this treatment not to fall in the category of cruel and unusual punishment. Our formal guidance assured us that it did not. I thought often about this point, though. One could well consider that sort of treatment torture. The U.S. Code defined torture as “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” But this was broad, and disturbing, because “severe” was a relative term, and could authorize all manner of treatment, acceptable to some, outrageous to others. Even on issues that seemed clear—does one support torture or not?—one quickly entered the world of gray. Dividing lines and definitions blurred, legitimate objectives clashed. Physical acts beyond that which I had experienced, the express infliction of pain, or of lasting physical or psychological harm . . . this I could see clearly: I would not do it and I did not want to be part of it. Would this occur? Would I need to walk out of the room, or oppose it? I did not know. What would I do if this occurred?

Traffic was light. It was early in the morning; there was no discernible rush hour traffic this day. The drive seemed shorter than usual. We left the city behind, drove through the country for a while, and pulled up to the gate of the interrogation facility.

Twenty minutes later I passed from a dark hallway, my eyes still blinded by the glaring sun outside, into the wan light of the interrogation room. The walls, chairs, and floor appeared pale, drab, and drained of color.

CAPTUS glanced up with anxiety when the liaison officer and I opened the door and stepped in. A new face. What was going on? We sat down opposite CAPTUS in silence.

My liaison partner glowered. CAPTUS looked uncertain. I felt tense. I tried to project authority.

The liaison officer leaned forward, elbows on knees, then leaned back in his chair, paused to stare at CAPTUS, and introduced me in a cold voice.

“This gentleman is a very senior officer who has come to speak with you.”

Another pause.

“You will answer whatever he asks you. He will not be pleased, and I will not be pleased, if you waste his time, and continue to waste mine. He came here because you have been wasting our time.”

The liaison officer and I sat silent and dour again, looking hard at CAPTUS.

“You have heard what I said?” the liaison officer demanded.

CAPTUS’s voice was soft: “Yes. Yes. I understand.”

He looked at a loss; terrified, uncertain, wanting to show his willingness to do whatever the “very senior officer” wanted. CAPTUS’s emotions were real, I was sure of that already. I had no idea how sincere he was, though. He could be terrified, yet also devious and a liar. I did not know.

To CAPTUS’s visible surprise and initial alarm I rose and extended my hand. He hastily half-rose in response but remained hunched, avoiding my eyes. Many years earlier, during my first overseas assignment, African peasants had treated me with the same trembling subordination. It had disturbed me then to see elderly men cower; in this instance, I supposed, we wanted CAPTUS that way.

I sat back down.

“Assalam’alaikoom”—greetings. “My name is Jacques,” I said.

I told him my “name” to begin to establish a relationship with the man. No one else he saw had names. He did not know who we were (although he had figured out that Roger was an American). He had no idea where he was. By my first gesture and my first sentence to CAPTUS I had already strongly distinguished myself from the cardboard figures, hostility, and silence he had known so far.

I was so intent on CAPTUS, on establishing my authority and beginning my role as his interrogator, that in this first session I noticed almost nothing about the interrogation room. I looked intently at CAPTUS the whole time. I started with a brief recapitulation of what he had been telling my predecessor.

“We know you possess information that is very important to us. We know you have been involved deeply with al-Qa’ida,” I said. “You have been involved in some terrible things, and know some people of great interest to me. Now you are here. And we will talk about these activities and people.”

My liaison partner stayed motionless and silent. CAPTUS glanced at me but kept his eyes down most of the time. I was taciturn, unsmiling, and deliberate in my movements.

“Today we will continue with the subjects you were discussing with the man who was here before me. I will have other subjects later, and I may do things differently. I may treat you . . . differently. That depends on you. Fahimt?”

CAPTUS had settled down a little. I believe he had feared being taken away when I walked in. He remained frightened and uncertain.

“Na’am”—yes.

“Hasan”—good. “Yesterday you said . . .”

My interrogation of CAPTUS had begun. I spoke until my voice started to tire. This is like a meeting with an asset, I thought, except that this one is petrified. He was trying hard to give no possible offense, to be responsive and plastic. He did not know what to do, considered dangerous every question I asked and gesture I made, and so tried, without knowing how, to disappear.

I returned to the office much later, tired but exhilarated that I had come to grips with my assignment, interrogating an HVT, a senior al-Qa’ida terrorist.