88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (25 page)

In the valley of the blind, it is said, the one-eyed man is king. There are advantages to knowing a bit about an esoteric topic that is suddenly deemed important, and about which almost no one else knows anything. Although I was almost completely oblivious of it, I had gained some notoriety during this period at CENTCOM and in the West
Wing of the White House, and a nickname to go with it. Just after General Franks’s arrival in Islamabad, I journeyed to the suite of offices commandeered by his staff to pay a call on General Jeff Kimmons, the CENTCOM “J-2,” or intelligence chief, with whom I had been regularly conferring on the secure phone from Tampa. Informed that he was not there, I began to spell my name for the enlisted clerk. A look of recognition immediately came over his face.

“Are you ‘Islamabad Bob’?” he asked. “Oh, sir! You’re famous!”

NOVEMBER 4, 2001

T
ODAY’S BRIEFING WAS GOING
to be different. You could tell immediately from the body language and the expressions on their faces. But no one let on. There was a protocol to be followed.

As was the custom after every interrogation of Dr. Bashir, the lead interrogator reported to my office in the early evening, as soon as he had returned from the “Clubhouse,” a joint facility we had established with the ISI. We had observed this exercise off and on since October 27, when the station and ISI had begun joint interrogations of Dr. Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud, the president of Ummah Tameer-e Nau (UTN).

UTN was founded in March 2000 as a non-governmental organization, devoted to providing humanitarian services in Afghanistan. It was one of many trying to provide relief and comfort to Afghans—including a number of Islamic NGOs of an extremist orientation, some of which were known or strongly suspected of providing financial support to terrorists. What distinguished UTN from all other NGOs active in Afghanistan was both the composition and orientation of its membership. Most of the nine leading members of the group were retired nuclear scientists or military officers; all were religious fundamentalists and devoted supporters of the Taliban. Their non-member “patron” and sponsor was none other than the infamous Hamid Gul, a retired lieutenant general of the Pakistan Army and former director-general of the ISI, who had become highly visible as a rhetorical promoter of global
jihad
and an outspoken advocate for the Taliban.

Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud, UTN’s president, was the former
director-general for nuclear power of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). During the early part of his career, he had been at least indirectly involved in Pakistan’s atomic weapons program, and for a while was project manager for Kushab, a heavy-water nuclear reactor designed to produce plutonium for weapons. It was perhaps not incidental that after Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons tests in 1998, Dr. Bashir was honored with a significant civilian award, the
Sitara–e-Intiaz
, by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. What most attracted scrutiny to Dr. Bashir, though, was not his scientific background but his radical political orientation and bizarre pseudoscientific theories. He espoused the view that Pakistan’s nuclear weapon should be the common property of the entire
Ummah
, the global Islamic community. He wrote extensively about the impact of sunspots on human affairs, and made predictions about the role of terrorism and nuclear weapons in precipitating doomsday. In his later years at PAEC, some of his colleagues actually had doubts about his sanity.

The fact that an Islamic extremist with crackpot ideas about the end of the world, substantial knowledge of nuclear weapons–related technology, and a belief that such knowledge should be spread widely was now actively engaged in Afghanistan and therefore in at least close physical proximity to al-Qa’ida was enough to give some pause. On that basis, it was natural that UTN would attract at least a certain amount of low-level suspicion in the West. The fact that it didn’t seem terribly active in Afghanistan—its overt activities appeared mostly limited to operation of a flour mill in Kandahar—gave rise to speculation as to what the organization might actually be up to. Beyond suspicion, though, there was little to go on. I made my first, low-level request of the ISI for information about UTN in January 2001, though I can no longer remember what triggered it.

After 9/11, the context in which the Islamic NGO was viewed changed radically. With al-Qa’ida having graphically demonstrated its ability to strike a staggering blow against the United States, the fear was that this might only be a precursor, and that more devastating means might be employed against us at any time. Within weeks, we began receiving sketchy reports from two of our European allies concerning
past activities of UTN, alleging that they may have been involved in passing nuclear-related information to rogue states—information which the Europeans had not shared with us previously. What they were now sharing was unspecific and provided neither corroborating details nor any clue as to how it was acquired, without which there was no way to judge its credibility. Intelligence services are loath to share anything that might point to the identity or nature of their sources, but what they had given us was almost useless; it seemed a combination of rumor and innuendo: “These people appear to be up to no good; we recommend you find out what they’re doing.” They refused to allow us to share even this sketchy information with anyone else.

By October 1, with several such reports in hand, I decided I had seen enough. We needed to take action. CIA had long been in the business of collecting information on nuclear and other WMD proliferation, particularly where there was a threat of proliferation to terrorist groups. I had played a central role in setting up the Counter-Proliferation Division. Now CTC was setting up a separate office, CTC/WMD, to pull together all information and leads pertaining to al-Qa’ida’s efforts to develop nuclear and other mass destructive capabilities. I proposed to them that we approach the Pakistanis for help in investigating UTN.

This was hardly my default position. After all, CIA is in the business of collecting intelligence, and whenever possible would prefer to do so on its own. But now time was of the essence. I was not so much concerned about what UTN might do in future. With open hostilities about to start, it was unlikely that the NGO would be able to maintain its previous pattern of travel and involvement in Afghanistan, and if it had al-Qa’ida clients, those individuals were unlikely to be available while ducking U.S. bombs. Opportunities to collect information on UTN activities going forward would probably be sparse. What we really needed to know was what capabilities it might have shared with al-Qa’ida in the past. For that, Dr. Bashir and company would need to be interrogated, and we could do that only with Pakistani assistance.

At length, headquarters relented, and provided me with so-called “tear line” information: approved text, which could be cut out along a tear line from a cable and presented to a cooperating service. What I
received was disappointing. It was essentially a number of vague and unsubstantiated assertions about Dr. Bashir’s involvement in sharing nuclear information with unauthorized parties, and reasons to suspect UTN might be doing the same with al-Qa’ida. When I presented it to General Jafar on October 10, he was unimpressed.

“This is all circumstantial,” he said. Bashir was a national hero. Bringing him in for questioning was likely to create a political firestorm, particularly if it was done in response to foreign pressure. Jafar was going to need more than this.

Two days later, thoroughly frustrated, I sent another message. By now those of us in Islamabad knew that one of our European partners did indeed have substantial information which could be used to convince the Pakistanis that Bashir posed a potentially significant threat, both to their interests and ours. The Europeans had come clean with us, but still insisted that we could not use their information with the Pakistanis. To me this was completely unsatisfactory, given the potential threat, but headquarters insisted that we had given the Pakistanis enough: hadn’t we told them Bashir was a dangerous man? In exasperation, I cabled: “There is an important distinction between evidence and assertion, and unfortunately the Pakistanis are aware of it.” I proposed that George Tenet weigh in directly with the head of our sister service. With their information in hand, the U.S. government—probably Secretary of State Colin Powell—could approach President Musharraf. As Pakistan had cut its ties with the Taliban and was currently providing the United States with a platform from which to make war on both the Taliban and al-Qa’ida, the Paks had to realize that they were nearly as liable to retaliation as the Americans, and far easier to reach. Any credible indication that Bashir and UTN had shared dangerous technology with al-Qa’ida would have to be seen as a potential threat to them as well. The problem was that no Pakistani official was willing to concede that a revered scientist would do such a thing, absent compelling evidence.

Our allies again would not accede to our wishes, and there was no high-level approach to Musharraf. As a result of my badgering, though, Jafar did consent to allow joint CIA/ISI interrogations of Bashir and his colleagues, including use of the polygraph.

One of CIA’s most accomplished interrogators, Barry McManus, happened to be with us at that moment to advise on another issue. He agreed to stay, and he was introduced to Dr. Bashir on October 27. Playing on his North African appearance, McManus presented himself as a Moroccan journalist: “Dr. Abraham.” He could help Bashir to clear his name, he said, but only if the Pakistani scientist were willing to accept his methods of assuring the veracity of his sources. “Do you want all the world to see you as a terrorist?”

Bashir quickly saw through the ruse, and the countermanipulation began. Identifying McManus as an African-American, he recounted the history of the American civil rights movement in impressive detail. “Shame on you, Dr. Abraham,” he said. How could someone of his background assist in oppressing an innocent man? Over three hours of contentious conversation, they nonetheless established a certain rapport.

“You need help,” McManus reminded him. “Would you rather speak with me, or with
them
?”
They
remained unidentified; Bashir agreed to be polygraphed.

The questioning continued for two more days, interspersed with repeated polygraph examinations, but the environment was not at all what we wanted. Bashir was being handled very deferentially by the Pakistanis, and was allowed to return home at night. Unsurprisingly, he was not making any damaging admissions: he had met Mullah Omar, as expected, but denied ever having met bin Laden. Though both the polygraph and McManus’s experience told us Bashir was withholding information, we had nothing concrete to confront him with, and no idea what he might be hiding. The interrogations were going in circles. The Pakistanis’ patience was wearing thin.

Then, while being questioned on October 30, Dr. Bashir had a sudden cardiac episode and collapsed in a heap. The Pakistanis summoned a doctor, who administered nitroglycerine and committed Bashir to a hospital for observation. The scientist seemed enfeebled. For the Pakistanis, that was the last straw. They were ready to call a halt to the proceedings, though I was insistent that the questioning continue. Assuming from my obduracy that I must have information I was not revealing, Jafar confronted me.

“If you’ve got evidence, you need to show it.”

Again, I sent a message to our European friends. Their suggestion was that we wait until Bashir’s release from temporary ISI custody, which seemed imminent, and approach him on our own with what we knew, threatening that we would reveal his past activities to Pakistani authorities unless he came clean on what he was withholding. This struck me as naive. Why would the UTN chief ever trust us not to take what we knew to the Pakistani authorities, and why, if confronted with past misdeeds, would he give us more damaging testimony to use against him—if indeed there was any? We would need to leverage the Pakistanis; this was where Bashir lived, and they were the only ones who could pose a credible threat to him.

On the night of October 30, our sister station in the concerned capital set up a video teleconference with the counterpart service, so that I could explore an alternative approach. I suggested that we present their service’s information to the Pakistanis as though it were our own. And rather than cite the real method employed in collecting it, which had been devious, we would state that it had been acquired through a CIA bugging operation outside Pakistan. In short, I proposed to provide the Pakistanis with the truth by wrapping it in a bouquet of lies. Finally, the Europeans agreed.

On November 1, I met with Jafar with a “white paper” in hand, and briefed him in detail on its contents. A few years previously, Bashir had met for two days in a Persian Gulf city with a mixed group of Arabs. He had provided them with a preliminary design for a dual power/desalination nuclear plant, as well as details on plutonium production at Pakistan’s Kushab reactor. A few months later, he met with them again, this time elsewhere in the Gulf. In the course of these discussions it became clear that UTN members had had similar talks with the government of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. Bashir was clearly interested in doing nuclear-related business, but for some reason there had been no follow-up meetings.

Jafar’s reaction was immediate. If what I had briefed was true, Dr. Bashir had grossly violated the oath taken at the time of his retirement not to reveal details of his nuclear-related work. The general was embarrassed
and angry. Jafar would be a full ally in getting to the bottom of this now, for reasons of his own.

Beginning on November 3, after his release from the hospital, Dr. Bashir’s questioning was more focused, and less friendly. Confronted with precise and detailed information on his past dealings with the Arabs, he quickly acknowledged the Gulf meetings, and provided further details. He had no problems passing a polygraph examination concerning the completeness of his testimony. The nuclear-related meetings with the Middle Easterners had apparently gone nowhere. But on questions regarding his activities in Afghanistan, Bashir was still coming up “deception indicated,” in the polygraphers’ parlance.