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“Why are you being nice to them?” one guard asked me in a sneering tone.

“I’m playing mind games with them,” I told him, “playing on their notions of respect and dignity. When I treat them well, they feel they have to be polite and responsive, and in return I get the intelligence I need. For that, I’ll be nice.”

One day General Dunlavey called me, along with the CIA chief [2 words redacted], Matt, to his office. He told us that FBI director Robert Mueller would be arriving shortly and that he would like us to accompany him and the director on a tour. I had never met Mueller before; he was appointed just before 9/11, and I had been largely outside the United States on missions since his appointment.

When the director arrived, I had just come out of an interrogation and was wearing cargo pants and a polo shirt and had a beard, so I didn’t look like an FBI agent. As we took him around the base, Dunlavey periodically asked me to explain things to Mueller, and I noticed the director looking at me strangely, as if he was trying to work out who I was. At the end of the tour, Dunlavey turned to the director and said: “Now that you’ve seen the operation, let me introduce you to the people who are making it happen.” Rather than have a general introduce Mueller to one of his own agents, I quickly said: “Ali Soufan, FBI, nice to meet you sir,” before Dunlavey could finish.

“You’re Ali?” the director asked, and his eyebrows shot up. He looked me up and down again.

“Yes, sir.”

“I should tell you that I just came from a trip overseas, and in many countries, when we landed, the foreign services would ask me, ‘How is Ali doing?’ I’ve heard a lot of great things about you, so I’m very happy to meet you.”

“That’s a great honor, sir. Thank you.”

We continued on to the FBI house at Gitmo, where all our agents worked and lived, and gathered in the living room, where several rows of folding chairs had been set up. Matt, the CIA chief of base, was also invited to come, and he and I stood at the back of the room. No one sat in the front two rows, and as the director was about to begin his talk, he asked, “No one wants to sit in the front?” There was silence. “Where’s Ali?” he asked, looking around, and when he spotted me at the back he beckoned me to the front: “Come sit here.” I guessed that my name was one of the few he knew.

One evening in late June 2002, while I was working in FBI headquarters in DC—I was splitting my time between helping at Gitmo and other operations—Dan Coleman approached my desk. “Ali, do you know that there is a Salim Hamdan in Gitmo? Isn’t he Abu Jandal’s brother-in-law?”

“Seriously? Gitmo?”

“Yes, I’ve just been sorting through detainee files. Here’s his arrest photo,” Dan said, handing it to me.

“So this is the famous Saqr,” I said, studying the photo.

Abu Jandal had once told us that he only knew Saqr by his alias. “Come on,” I had told him, “are you really going to claim you don’t know your own brother-in-law’s real name?” Abu Jandal had blushed, caught in a lie. He had no idea how we knew of their relationship.

“It’s Salim Hamdan,” he’d said.

I went to see Pat D’Amuro and explained what I’d just learned, and we agreed that I would go interview Hamdan. At the time, there was no “fly team” (a specialized rapid response team) set up to interrogate new detainees, so Pat let me take whoever I wanted. I chose George Crouch, who had worked with me on the Cole investigation and was at the time temporarily assigned with me to headquarters. We sent word in advance to the FBI base at Gitmo that we were coming to interview Hamdan.

Bill Corbett, the Gitmo case agent at the time, met us when we landed. “I know it’s late,” I told him, “but we want to go straight to interview Hamdan.”

“There’s a problem,” he said. “The CIA have suddenly decided to interrogate him right now.”

“What suddenly pricked their interest?”

“I know,” Bill replied, “there’s something strange going on. Hamdan has been in custody for months, and the CIA has