88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

Author’s Note

List of Maps

Cast of Principal Characters

PART ONE • Inflection Point

1. The Plan

2. The Subversive

PART TWO • The Road to War: Pakistan, the Taliban, and al-Qa’ida

3. The Best of Times

4. Warnings and Forebodings

5. Romancing the Taliban

6. The War That Never Was

7. The Outlier

8. Countdown

PART THREE • The First American-Afghan War

9. Non-Negotiable Demands

10. Charting the Course

11. Perfidious Albion

12. A Dip in the Shark Tank

13. 
Vox Clamantis

14. A Fall from Grace

15. The Wages of Sin

16. Son of Kings

17. No Return

18. Son of the Lion

19. “As Flies to Wanton Boys . . .”

20. The Ambush

21. Dress Rehearsal

22. Nuclear Nightmares

23. The Prodigal

24. Enemies Without, Enemies Within

25. Salvation

26. Entering the Rapids

27. Cataract

28. A Wilderness of Mirrors

29. Redemption and Vindication

30. Serendipity to Inevitability

31. Earthly Rewards

32. Badlands

33. Twin Reprieves

34. The Convergence

35. The Escape

PART FOUR • Pakistan, Al-Qa’ida, and the Wider War

36. The Czar

37. Distraction in the East

38. Days of Hope and Promise

39. The Poet

40. The Public and the Personal

41. The Reckoning

42. The Sage

43. Flirting with Armageddon

PART FIVE • Postscript: Once and Future Wars

44. Premonitions

45. The Unraveling

46. Acceptance

Photographs

Acknowledgments

Photo Credits

About the Author

Index

For Paula and Doug, who shared the adventure

On December 7, 2001, eighty-eight days after 9/11, Gul Agha Shirzai seized the Governor’s Palace in Kandahar from the fleeing Taliban, as Hamid Karzai, fresh from negotiating the Taliban’s surrender, prepared to travel to Kabul to assume his duties as head of Afghanistan’s interim government. Just weeks earlier, both events had seemed highly improbable, if not impossible. On that extraordinary day, I knew I would write this book, and what its title would be. I began making preparations.

After my return to Langley in 2002, I was able to review official cables I had sent and received from 1999 onward, and to make cryptic notations to aid my memory. These notes provided the backbone for much of the book. During my subsequent time in Washington, from 2002 to 2006, I was able to document events more easily. My calendar diaries, though very brief, included lists of participants in interagency meetings and the general topics discussed.

When at last I sat down in the middle of 2012 to write, over ten years had passed since 9/11. Many of my recollections from my time in Pakistan were still utterly clear, involving scenes I had mentally stored up and reviewed in the intervening years. I found that my earlier notations brought back a wealth of vividly detailed memories. My habit of saving almost everything I laid hands on while in Islamabad also proved a blessing: official visitor schedules, clippings from the Pakistani press, invitations to official events, even dinner menus, helped me, along with extensive open-source research, to tie the details of recalled events to specific dates.

The book contains reconstructed dialogue. Many of my recollections of key conversations in which I was directly engaged, or which were recounted to me soon after the fact by one of the participants, are
available to me upon consulting my notes. My recognition at the time of how extraordinary some of them were served to imprint them in my mind. Conversations where I remember the burden of what was said, but not the specific words, I have related without quotation.

As one might expect in a book written by a former spy, the names of some characters appear as aliases, or as partial true names. In some cases, I have done this in deference to the wishes of the individual concerned; in others, I have done so on my own account; and in some cases I have acted in deference to requests from CIA. Any time I do not identify an individual by his or her full true name, I place quotations around the name in the initial instance of its use. The need to maintain anonymity leads me to withhold some identifying details from my accounts of certain individuals, but in no case do I falsify either their positions or their descriptions.

There were a number of books that greatly helped me to put my recollections into proper context. Particularly useful here was
Prisoners of Hope
, by Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, the two young American women who were among the eight Taliban captives from Shelter Now International. Eric Blehm’s
The Only Thing Worth Dying For
provided an account of Hamid Karzai’s campaign from Uruzgan to Kandahar, told from the perspective of the Special Forces A-Team accompanying Team Echo. It helped me to understand strictly military aspects of the operation.
Company Man
, former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo’s account of his thirty-four years at CIA, served me with an optic different from my own on the tumultuous events affecting CIA’s detention and interrogation program during my time as director of the Counter-Terrorism Center.

I also have benefited from a number of authors whose experience, research, or analysis have generally informed the thinking reflected here. In
My Life in the Taliban
, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, one of the founding members of the Taliban and its former ambassador to Pakistan, has provided useful insights into the reasons for Taliban actions and attitudes. I have also had the opportunity to meet and speak with Zaeef at some length. These discussions between former adversaries have helped to shape my thoughts about possible future outcomes in
Afghanistan and the potential post-conflict role of the Taliban. In
War Comes to Garmser
, Carter Malkasian, who impressively fills the roles of both scholar and practitioner, provides a very useful “micro” view of how Coalition missteps and local Afghan politics have led to the Taliban’s return in a representative part of Afghanistan. Peter Bergen and Katharine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation have edited
Talibanistan
, a collection of analytic research pieces that, among other things, provide useful insight into the reasons for the Taliban’s abdication of power and subsequent return, as well as the increased post-9/11 radicalization of the Tribal Areas in Pakistan. And
Duty
, Robert Gates’s memoir of his time as defense secretary, offered helpful insights into the attitudes, assumptions, and reasoning behind the formulation of Obama administration policy on Afghanistan.

Finally, the accounts contained in this book benefited greatly from the recollections and insights offered by former colleagues. Barry McManus, lead interrogator of the Pakistani scientist Dr. Bashir, the head of UTN, provided a richness of detail concerning those tension-filled days. During that time, Barry was the embodiment of grace under pressure. Similarly, “Marco,” the senior JSOC representative in Islamabad, who would prefer to maintain in retirement the selfless anonymity he chose while on duty, was most helpful in supplementing my recollections of the rescue of the Shelter Now detainees. “Jimmy Flanagan”—who risked his life on many occasions, along with the other members of Team Echo and their uniformed brothers-in-arms, to guide and protect Hamid Karzai—shared his first-person accounts of Karzai’s exfiltration from Afghanistan; Team Echo’s return; and the decisive battles of Tarin Kowt and Shawali Kowt. “Dave,” my redoubtable deputy, was characteristically generous in providing his reminiscences, particularly about the capture of Abu Zubayda. He is an unsung hero of that time.

Any errors or omissions that remain despite the assistance catalogued above reflect my failings alone.

1. Route of Hamid Karzai

2. Route of Gul Agha Shirzai

3. Pakistani Tribal Areas

NB: Names entirely in quotations are either aliases or partially true names, employed to protect the identities of the individuals concerned.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Charlie Allen,
Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection

Gary Berntsen,
chief of Team Juliet

Cofer Black,
Director of the Counterterrorist Center (CTC)

John Brennan,
acting Director, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)

David Cohen,
Deputy Director for Operations (1995–97)

“Dan,”
senior military targeting officer, CTC

“Dave,”
Deputy Chief of Station, Islamabad

“Detroit,”
CIA team leader in Faisalabad

“Duane,”
member of Team Foxtrot

John Ferguson,
senior CIA officer in New Delhi

“Jimmy Flanagan,”
member of Team Echo

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo,
Executive Director of Central Intelligence

Porter Goss,
Director of Central Intelligence (2004–06)

“Greg,”
leader of Team Echo

Pat Hailey,
CIA representative to U.S. Central Command

“Hank,”
chief of CTC/SO

“James,”
junior reports officer, Islamabad

“Jeff,”
senior reports officer, Islamabad

“Jim,”
CIA case officer, Islamabad

Steve Kappes,
Deputy Director for Operations (2004)

“Kate,”
senior communicator

“Jim M,”
senior paramilitary officer

“Mark,”
leader of Team Foxtrot

John Massie,
deputy chief of CTC/SO

John McLaughlin,
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence

Barry McManus,
senior polygrapher and interrogator

Pat Murray,
chief of staff to DCI Porter Goss

James “Jim” Pavitt,
Deputy Director for Operations (1999–2004)

“Colonel Pete,”
senior CIA representative to JSOTF-N, “Task Force Dagger”

Jose Rodriguez,
Deputy Director for Operations (2004–07)

Gary Schroen,
chief of the “Jawbreaker” team in northern Afghanistan

Gary Spitzel,
chief of the South Asia Task Force

George Tenet,
Director of Central Intelligence (1997–2004)

“Tom,”
Farsi-Dari translator

Dan Webster,
former Deputy Chief, Near East Division; senior annuitant, Islamabad

AFGHANS

Tayyib Agha,
office director for Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban

Mullah Abdul Jalil Akhund,
“Mullah Jalil,” Taliban deputy foreign minister

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar,
Taliban deputy chief of Army Staff