The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [197]
In contrast, attempting to “break” detainees into compliance without knowing anything about them or the level of their involvement can have disastrous consequences. Interrogators will not know whether information they are given is accurate, pointless, or false.
The interrogator also uses the fear that the detainee feels as a result of his capture and isolation from his support base. People crave human contact, and this is especially true in some cultures. The interrogator turns this knowledge to advantage by becoming the one person the detainee can talk to and who listens to what he has to say. He uses this to encourage the detainee to open up.
Acting in a nonthreatening way isn’t what the terrorist expects from a U.S. interrogator. This adds to the detainee’s confusion and makes him more likely to cooperate. Our approach also utilizes the need the detainee feels to maintain a position of respect and value to the interrogator. Because the interrogator is the one person speaking to and listening to the detainee, a relationship is built—and the detainee doesn’t want to jeopardize it. This was very much the case with [1 word redacted] and Abu Zubaydah, and [1 word redacted] were able to capitalize on it.
As [3 words redacted] were in the middle of writing our report on Padilla, Abu Zubaydah’s plan to fill American apartment buildings with bombs, and the other intelligence he had given [1 word redacted], Boris walked into our room with a big smile. He came up to [1 word redacted], shook [1 word redacted] hand, and said, “I had you all wrong. It was great.”
[3 words redacted] looked at each other in surprise. [1 word redacted] success had undermined his entire approach and had shown that our technique was the effective one. All [1 word redacted] could say in response was: “There is a lot of work to do here.” [1 word redacted] suspected that [1 word redacted] had told Boris to come to [1 word redacted] to try to repair the relationship. At that point [1 word redacted] was still higher up than Boris, as he was a CTC employee and Boris was just a contractor.
Based on the intelligence [1 word redacted] got, on May 17, 2002, FBI headquarters sent out threat warnings to American apartment building owners generally, and extra security was added to the Brooklyn Bridge. At the same time, the international manhunt launched for Padilla was closing in on him. The Pakistanis knew that he had headed to Egypt. From there [1 word redacted] discovered that he had gone to Switzerland. He was tracked to Zurich, where he boarded a plane for Chicago. A contingent of Swiss officials followed him onto the plane. FBI agents based in New York headed to Chicago to pick him up.
The New York office was given the Padilla case because of his al-Qaeda connection. Kenny Maxwell and the JTTF were in charge, and on a secure line [1 word redacted] spoke to Kenny about Padilla. Kenny told [1 word redacted] that they planned to arrest him as soon as he landed. He sounded annoyed with this decision. His preference, he said, was to instead monitor Padilla and see who met up with him in Chicago.
[1 word redacted] fully agreed with Kenny. [1 word redacted] found it strange that Padilla was heading to Chicago. He was raised in Florida and lived in New York. “What is the Chicago connection?” [1 word redacted] asked.
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” Kenny agreed. He said that headquarters had decided to pick up Padilla on arrival out of fear of losing the tail. They didn’t want to take any risks and thought it was safest to just arrest him. [1 word redacted] understood their concerns.
As Padilla stepped off the plane at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, FBI agents pulled him aside, executing a material witness warrant issued by the Southern District of New York. He was searched and was found to have ten thousand dollars with him, along with a cell phone and a personal telephone book. (Padilla is in a U.S. jail