The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [226]
When the Department of Justice’s inspector general investigated detainee abuse and asked Qahtani about me, he complained that I had put him in the brig and let no one else see him, but he said I had “some sense of humanity.” The IG noted that the logs showed that I wasn’t the only person who saw Qahtani; other agents saw him, including members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Agents reading the report told me that it seemed as if the IG were almost trying to get Qahtani to say something negative about me. And Qahtani had reason to hate me: I was the face that he associated with his having been identified and taken from the general population—but I had “some sense of humanity.” What was strange, however, was that the IG only asked Qahtani, the would-be twentieth hijacker, about me, and never asked for my version of what had happened. Perhaps because Qahtani didn’t say anything negative, the IG didn’t feel he needed to.
While Secretary Rumsfeld and members of his team such as Haynes, Wolfowitz, and Feith were busy approving the use of these techniques, they were also getting in the way of successful interrogations. FBI and CITF investigators identified detainee No. 37 as a Yemeni al-Qaeda operative called al-Batar, based on information and a description I had gotten from Abu Jandal. Batar was the person to whom Abu Jandal had delivered money—the sum turned out to be five thousand dollars—to procure a Yemeni wife for bin Laden. As Abu Jandal had told me, he went into the errand thinking that the money was for a mission. At the airport in Sanaa, he was met by Nibras, one of the Cole suicide bombers, and Batar, and together the three men went to the al-Jazeera Hotel. There Abu Jandal gave the five thousand dollars to Batar, who thanked him and told him that the money was for a dowry. Disillusioned and chagrined, Abu Jandal returned to Afghanistan shortly after.
Given his connection to bin Laden’s Yemeni wife, I thought that Batar would be especially valuable in tracking down the al-Qaeda leader. After I had introduced myself to Batar, he said to me, “So you’re the FBI agent Ali?”
“Yes.”
“Saqr told me about you,” he said, referring to Hamdan by his alias.
“What did he say?”
“He told me that originally he wouldn’t cooperate, but he met you, and said you are trustworthy and said he cooperated with you.”
“That’s true.”
“Saqr told me he releases me from my oath so that I can speak to you.”
“What was the oath?”
“When we were captured, we both swore to each other that whatever happened in interrogations, we would never admit to knowing each other.” (Hamdan had kept that oath, as he had never mentioned Batar’s name to me.)
“And?”
“Hamdan told me that you treated him well, and were honest, and let him check on his family to see that they were okay.”
“I did.”
“Hamdan told me he thought it was in our interest to cooperate. And so we canceled the oath.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s start with your background.”
“I’ll tell you everything, but I would also like to check that my family is okay.”
“We can arrange that.”
“What I’ll do is that I’ll tell you half my story. From what Hamdan told me, you know al-Qaeda well and will know whether I’m telling the truth. And then I will tell you the other half after I make a phone call.”
I spoke to the FBI and the CITF commanders. They agreed that it made sense to let Batar make a call and said they’d get permission from General Miller. (Miller had instructed that any calls had to have prior approval from him.) I returned to Batar and told him he had a deal.
He admitted, for the first time, his true identity, and detailed his background,