500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars Read online

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  Contents

  Introduction

  The Characters

  Prologue

  Book One: A War of Unknown Warriors

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Book Two: The Dismal Shade

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Book Three: The Threat

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Notes and Sources

  Index

  To Frank Jordan

  Teacher, mentor, friend and role model to untold numbers of boys and men, including me.

  The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and the establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always be one of uncertainty, confusion, error and wild and fierce fanaticism.

  —JOHN C. CALHOUN,

  A Disquisition on Government

  INTRODUCTION

  This is not the book I set out to write. Originally, I had planned to chronicle the Bush administration’s response to terrorism from the day of the September 11 attacks through the end of the president’s second term in January 2009. The deeper I dug, though, the more I came to realize that my original strategy was off base. Instead, I concluded that every aspect of the terror wars flowed from judgments made in little more than five hundred days after 9/11—554 to be exact. Everything—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, detainee treatment, CIA tactics, and more—could be traced to those eighteen months. What followed in the nearly six years afterward was little more than reactions to those early decisions.

  Equally important, I found that the strategy cobbled together in those initial days was not the creation of a single group of politicians or even of a single government. The Bush administration was important, but America did not hold a monopoly on shaping the multipronged assault on terrorists.

  So, I changed directions. By concentrating my research on the rush of events over those 554 days, I would be able to lay bare the essence of a trauma that haunts the world to this day. I later decided that the full story could not be understood simply from a depiction of events in the corridors of power; this history was also shaped by the experiences of the powerless. Extraordinary rendition was not simply a policy adopted in government conference rooms—it played out in real ways on real people’s lives, as did decisions about the application of the Geneva Conventions, the use of secret prisons, and the like. These experiences, sometimes horrendous, helped shape directions of international policies in profound and often unseen ways. I would be remiss in ignoring those individual consequences.

  As with most histories, this endeavor entailed covering some now-familiar paths, although I was surprised by how often the accepted version of events proved to be inaccurate. A trove of additional evidence—derived from years of conducting interviews, reviewing documents, and listening to secret recordings—exposed a vast array of previously unknown details that make the narrative of this era clearer and, in some cases, more shocking. Woven together, I believe these elements of the story—the known and unknown, the domestic and the international, the great and the small—reveal the heart of an epochal upheaval that historians will continue to examine for decades to come.

  Readers looking in these pages for my view of these events will no doubt be disappointed. I have little faith in opinion, even my own. Instead, this book is meant to be a dispassionate history of this crucial time. And I have found there is little in these tales that is black-and-white. While there have no doubt been horrible decisions, there are few villains; the Bush administration and its allies did not want to impose a police state and its critics did not want to coddle terrorists. Few on either side acted with disregard to the concerns of the other; instead, each wrestled with finding the proper balance, as they saw it. I leave it to the readers to decide who, if anyone, was right.

  KURT EICHENWALD

  (June, 2012)

  THE CHARACTERS

  The White House

  George W. Bush

  President of the United States

  Dick Cheney

  Vice President

  On the White House Staff

  Andy Card

  Chief of Staff

  Josh Bolten Deputy

  Chief of Staff

  Karl Rove

  Advisor

  Richard Clarke

  Special Advisor on Cybersecurity

  Stuart Bowen

  Deputy Staff Secretary

  In the National Security Council

  Condoleezza Rice

  National Security Advisor

  Stephen Hadley

  Deputy National Security Advisor

  John Bellinger III

  Senior Associate Counsel

  In the White House Counsel’s Office

  Alberto Gonzales

  White House Counsel

  Tim Flanigan

  Deputy Counsel

  Bradford Berenson

  Associate Counsel

  In the Office of the Vice President

  David Addington

  Senior Counsel

  The Central Intelligence Agency

  George Tenet

  Director

  John McLaughlin

  Acting Deputy Director

  John Rizzo

  Acting General Counsel

  In the Counterterrorist Center

  Cofer Black

  Director

  Ben Bonk

  Deputy Director

  Hank Crumpton

  Special Operations

  Station Chief

  Robert Lady, Milan

  Field Officers

  Gary Schroen

  Gary Berntsen

  Johnny Michael Spann

  Dave Tyson

  Jeffrey Castelli

  John Kiriakou

  Deuce Martinez

  Consultants

  James Mitchell

  Retired SERE psychologist

  Bruce Jessen

  Retired SERE psychologist

  The Pentagon

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Secretary of Defense

  Paul Wolfowitz

  Deputy Secretary

  William “Jim” Haynes

  General Counsel

  Whit Cobb

  Deputy General Counsel

  Richard Shiffrin

  Deputy General Counsel, Intelligence

  Alberto Mora

  General Counsel, U.S. Navy

  Douglas Feith

  Undersecretary for Policy

  Steve Cambone

  Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Policy

  United States Central Command

  Tommy Franks

  Commander

  With the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  Richard Myers

  Chairman (from October 1, 2001)

  Hugh Shelton

  Chairman (until October 1, 2001)

  Peter Pace

  Vice Chairman

  Jane Dalton

  Legal Advisor

  With the N
aval Criminal Investigative Service

  David Brant

  Director

  Michael Gelles

  Chief Psychologist

  With Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Program

  Lt. Col. Morgan Banks

  Chief Psychologist

  Joseph Witsch

  Instructor

  At USAMIIRD

  Bruce Ivins

  Anthrax Specialist

  John Ezzell

  Anthrax Specialist

  At Guantanamo Bay

  Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey

  Commander

  Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert

  Commander

  Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller

  Commander

  Lt. Col. Diane Beaver

  Legal Advisor

  Maj. John Leso

  Psychologist

  Col. Larry James

  Psychologist

  Britt Mallow

  Commander, Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF)

  Mark Fallon

  Director, CITF

  Blaine Thomas

  Assistant Special Agent in Charge, CITF

  The Department of Justice

  John Ashcroft

  Attorney General

  Larry Thompson

  Deputy Attorney General

  Theodore Olson

  Solicitor General

  Paul Clement

  Deputy Solicitor General

  Gregory Garre

  Assistant Solicitor General

  In the Criminal Division

  Michael Chertoff

  Director

  In the Office of Legal Counsel

  Jay Bybee

  Assistant Attorney General

  John Yoo

  Deputy Assistant Attorney General

  Patrick Philbin

  Deputy Assistant Attorney General

  John Delahunty

  Special Counsel

  With the Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Bob Mueller

  Director

  Tom Pickard

  Acting Director

  Dale Watson

  Assistant Director

  Pasquale D’Amuro

  Assistant Director

  Ali Soufan

  Special Agent

  Harry Samit

  Special Agent

  Russell Fincher

  Special Agent

  Craig Donnachie

  Special Agent

  Robert Fuller

  Special Agent

  Greg Jones

  Supervisory Special Agent

  Michael Maltbie

  Supervisory Special Agent

  With the Immigration and Naturalization Service

  James Ziglar

  Commissioner

  José Meléndez-Pérez

  Customs Inspector

  John Weess

  Special Agent

  Department of Transportation

  Norm Mineta

  Secretary

  With the Federal Aviation Administration

  Monte Belger

  Acting Deputy Administrator

  Dave Canoles

  Manager, Air Traffic Evaluations and Investigations

  Ben Sliney

  Manager, National Operations

  Department of State

  Colin Powell

  Secretary

  Richard Armitage

  Deputy Secretary

  William Taft IV

  General Counsel

  Pierre-Richard Prosper

  Ambassador-at-Large

  Christopher Hoh

  Deputy Ambassador Sarajevo

  Gary Edson

  Deputy Assistant

  The National Security Agency

  Michael Hayden

  Director

  The Centers for Disease Control

  Sherif Zaki

  Chief, Infectious Disease Pathology

  The United States Senate

  Joe Biden

  Delaware Democrat

  Robert Byrd

  West Virginia Democrat

  Tom Daschle

  South Dakota Democrat

  Patrick Leahy

  Vermont Democrat

  Joseph Lieberman

  Connecticut Democrat

  Ted Kennedy

  Massachusetts Democrat

  Don Nickles

  Nevada Republican

  Harry Reid

  Nevada Democrat

  Arlen Specter

  Pennsylvania Republican

  Federal Courts

  Robert Doumar

  District Judge

  T. S. Ellis 3d

  District Judge

  Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

  District Judge

  Michael Mukasey

  District Judge

  J. Harvis Wilkinson 3d

  Appellate Judge

  Tommy Miller

  Magistrate Judge

  In Great Britain

  Tony Blair

  Prime Minister

  Jack Straw

  Foreign Secretary

  David Manning

  Foreign Policy Advisor

  Geoff Hoon

  Defense Secretary

  Alastair Campbell

  Director of Communications

  Jonathan Powell

  Chief of Staff

  Christopher Meyer

  Ambassador to the United States

  Lt. Gen. Anthony Pigott

  Coordinator, Afghanistan campaign

  The Tipton Three

  Shafiq Rasul

  Ruhal Ahmed

  Asif Iqbal

  In Canada

  Bill Graham

  Foreign Minister

  Ahmad El-Maati

  Terrorist suspect (exonerated)

  Abdullah Almalki

  Terrorist suspect (exonerated)

  Maher Arar

  Terrorist suspect (exonerated)

  Monia Mazigh

  Arar’s wife

  Patrick Callaghan

  Staff Sargeant, Mounties

  Randy Buffam

  Corporal, Mounties

  Rick Flewelling

  Corporal, Mounties

  Alexander Gelvan

  CSIS agent

  Theresa Sullivan

  CSIS agent

  In Bosnia

  Alija Behmen

  Prime Minister

  Muhamed Bešić

  Interior Minister

  Belkacem Bensayah

  Terrorist suspect (exonerated)

  Anela Kobilica

  Bensayah’s wife

  Lakhdar Boumediene

  Terrorist suspect (exonerated)

  In Italy

  Silvio Berlusconi

  Prime Minister

  Gianfranco Battelli

  Director, SISMI

  Nicolò Pollari

  Director, SISMI

  Gustavo Pignero

  Director of Counter-Espionage, SISMI

  Stefano D’Ambrosio

  SISMI officer

  Luciano Pironi

  Carabinieri officer

  Abu Omar

  Terrorist suspect, uncharged

  In Afghanistan

  Hamid Karzai

  Chair, Transitional Administration

  With the American Military

  John Bolduc

  Master Sergeant

  Mark Nutsch

  Captain, Special Forces

  Henry Smith

  Army Major

  With the Northern Alliance

  Ahmad Shah Massoud

  Rashid Dostum

  Masood Khalili

  Muhammed Aref Sawari

  With the Taliban

  John Walker Lindh

  Yaser Esam Hamdi

  In France

  Jacques Chirac

  President

  In Russia

  Vladmir Putin

  President

  In Germany

  Gerhard Schröder

  Chancellor<
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  In Syria

  George Salloum

  Head of Interrogations