Fahimt?!

It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King

“Fahimt?!”

I sat staring at CAPTUS, my face affectless. CAPTUS held his eyes open wide, the whites showing around his irises. He kept blinking. So this was what one of the top al-Qa’ida operatives looked like. The iconic photographs of Usama Bin Ladin and of Bin Ladin’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri—scraggly hair, the dirty beard of a man who slept under a bridge covered in wet cardboard, gaunt eyes, slouched shoulders, effeminate lips—had conditioned me to expect the same offensive, deranged characteristics. Despite my poker face, though, I was surprised: CAPTUS was unremarkable, normal-looking with the gut of a sedentary man. XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXX. He sat slouched on a folding metal chair.

The CIA and fellow agencies in the Intelligence Community had devoted years of painstaking work to identify who CAPTUS was, and then to find him. Colleagues had followed up endless numbers of vague, largely useless years-old reports. And yet, the officers dedicated to CAPTUS’s case were astounding in their dedication and pursued every conceivable lead for years, analyzing concrete reports and vague reports, thinking big and thinking in precise detail, as they sat in small, windowless cubicles and slowly, methodically checked every conceivable way to identify and locate CAPTUS, whom they came to consider one of the key individuals in Bin Ladin’s worldwide network of operatives, financiers, sympathizers, cutouts, and allies. Eliminate CAPTUS, the analysts came to feel, and CIA will have seriously crippled al-Qa’ida’s XXXXXXXX capabilities.

I was flabbergasted, as a Directorate of Operations case officer, to observe such single-minded purpose in my analyst colleagues. For many years I had recruited spies, and sent in my reports, and had little to do with the analysts on the other side of the house. Like many in the DO, I often found them to be immersed in minutiae that would drive an ops officer half-crazy.

Finally all the pieces had come together: The Agency analysts hunting for CAPTUS, his network, and his links to Bin Ladin had found him. They had found CAPTUS. The analysts’ work had made me blink in amazement; it was passing rare to see analysts produce critical, operationally relevant information. This level of success comes rarely in an officer’s career. The Agency’s Seventh Floor had given the green light to snatch him, after weighing the risks of a “flap” (of something going wrong) and the benefits of neutralizing a key component of the al-Qa’ida XXXXXXXX network and of having the chance to interrogate him. There was a strong possibility that he could lead us directly to Bin Ladin himself, the highest goal of the U.S. government in the Global War on Terror. In any event, the time for finely weighing pros and cons had ended with the attacks on 9/11. Now the approach was to act aggressively and worry about consequences later, if necessary.

The Agency’s officers in the field XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX had “rendered” CAPTUS from a country in the Middle East—kidnapped him as he walked along a sidewalk. The snatch took seconds to execute. The CIA’s decades-old guidelines on interrogation, the KUBARK “Human Resource Interrogation” manual, which I had first seen twenty years earlier when I was working on Central American issues, recommends this be done in such a way as

to achieve surprise and [cause] the maximum amount of mental discomfort . . . [so that the subject] experiences intense feelings of shock, insecurity and psychological stress. . . . [The subject should be] immediately blindfolded and handcuffed. [The subject should never hear a word spoken] from the moment of apprehension to initial questioning.

XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XX. Only a few days later CAPTUS sat before me, XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX calculating what to say to try to get out of the terrible fix in which he found himself XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX. He now knew the Americans had him, but he had no idea where. He knew nothing else.

My interpreter and I also sat on metal chairs. Otherwise, the room was bare, seedy, windowless, and silent. I took notes by writing on a pad balanced on my knee.

I leaned toward CAPTUS, locking my eyes into his wide and blinking ones. He leaned back slightly. I repeated:

“Fahimt?!”

My tone was commanding, demanding, a little too loud. This was Arabic for “do you understand?”

I assumed that he would always describe himself as an innocent man, perhaps a victim. That is what anyone would have done, sitting in his place. But I was not buying it. I thought he was being disingenuous.

CAPTUS did not answer.

XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX .

The KUBARK manual also cautioned that an interrogator must “have an exceptional degree of self-control, to avoid displays of genuine anger, irritation, sympathy, or weariness.”

This moment, though, I was peremptory. My question had been simple. For a third time, louder, I demanded CAPTUS,

“Fahimt?!”

The silence continued as I sat staring at him.

We had rendered him because of his involvement in terrorism. Americans had died. My orders were to learn what he knew so that we could destroy al-Qa’ida.

I told him that I knew when he told the truth—and others were not as nice, or patient, as I was.

My tone was uncharacteristic. I thought CAPTUS grew uneasy.

Another moment passed.

“Na’am,” CAPTUS said. “Ana Fahim.”—Yes, I understand.

He answered my question.

It did not do him any good, though.