Breaking Cover Read online

  In addition to dealing with rockets and mortars, almost every morning between six and eight we woke up to a massive car bomb detonating on the streets of Baghdad. These bombs were timed to occur during rush hour in order to inflict the greatest number of casualties. The enormous explosions were followed by a whoosh as shock waves emanated from the epicenter of the attack, violently shaking everything in their path, including the walls of our thin-skinned pods.

  The morning routine was always the same: a car bomb went off, and my stomach churned as I realized two things: (1) dozens of innocent people had just died, and (2) I was still stuck in Iraq. It was a Groundhog Day existence, a bad dream that I desperately wanted to wake up from but never did. There was no respite from the tension, no place to go to unwind. It was an unrelenting cycle of stress and anxiety.

  In spite of all the chaos, there was much work to be done.

  Several months into our Iraqi tour, there was a terrorist attack on an NGO (nongovernmental organization) convoy near Yarmouk, Baghdad, that resulted in the death of a US citizen. We decided to try to collect intelligence on the terrorist operation. I asked officers to query their sources about the event to see what we could unearth regarding the identities of those responsible for this brutal attack.

  Even though Yarmouk wasn’t far from the Green Zone, it had become an incredibly dangerous neighborhood. Ethnic cleansing in Yarmouk had hit a fever pitch, as it had in the rest of Baghdad. The Sunni residents who were the majority sect there had pushed out most—if not all—of their Shi’a neighbors. The fear of “the other” and the interminable violence against the opposite sect had turned Yarmouk, and indeed much of Iraq, into killing fields. Sunnis were killing Shi’a and Shi’a were killing Sunnis.

  But that wasn’t the only problem. There was intracommunal violence and power plays in which Shi’a killed Shi’a and Sunnis killed Sunnis for control of neighborhoods, government positions, and leadership of insurgent groups. Any Iraqis who wandered into the wrong part of town and were not the “right” sect, religion, or group faced the very strong possibility they’d never come back out. The bodies of those who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time would often be discovered hanging from light poles or left on the side of the road to be eaten by wild dogs. Bodies were piling up in the streets. Relatives were scared to collect the corpses, as some were wired with IEDs that would explode if they were moved.

  In the midst of this chaos, an American NGO official planned to visit Yarmouk to carry out a prodemocracy training project at the headquarters of a prominent Sunni political party. To facilitate this meeting, the young woman had been assigned a personal security detail (PSD) that included three vehicles: one to handle the principal, one to take up the lead, and a third to follow the others. Each vehicle would have at least two security contractors to support the move between the NGO compound and the party headquarters.

  The security retinue successfully delivered the official to the meeting location and remained there throughout the one-and-a-half-hour visit. At the conclusion of the meeting, party officials reportedly asked the American trainer if she would like additional security for the move out of the neighborhood. According to those same officials, she declined this offer.

  What she might not have realized was that her convoy had to drive through an area referred to by locals as the “Triangle of Death.” The party headquarters was located at the northwest corner of that triangle, and the visitors would have to travel south and then east to get out of the neighborhood. They had to traverse one of the most dangerous corridors in Yarmouk, largely under the control of local PSDs attached to prominent local families and informal neighborhood watch groups. Because there was no law and order, these groups functioned less like security groups and more like urban street gangs. The young men dressed in knockoff Adidas tracksuits and shibshib (sandals) were simply thugs. They terrorized the neighborhoods they pretended to protect. They knew little of religion or ideology.

  I don’t know the motives for what happened or how far in advance the operation was planned . . . but what unfolded next was a complete nightmare. The first car in the security retinue pulled out from the heavily fortified compound and headed down the street. Its progress was halted by a car that appeared to be stalled in the middle of the road. The second vehicle with the principal inside pulled up behind the lead car. It took a few seconds for the drivers to realize that this wasn’t a broken-down vehicle but an ambush.

  Without warning, shooting commenced. All kinds of weaponry were used in the assault: handguns, AK-47s, and an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launcher. The rear vehicle, which had been delayed leaving the compound, couldn’t see what was happening through the smoke. It slammed into the middle vehicle, coming to an abrupt standstill.

  The three cars sat limp in the road with their tires blown out. The terrorists approached the convoy and tried to open the doors of the middle vehicle, presumably to take the principal hostage, but they could not get the car doors open. Frustrated, they threw a grenade under the car. A few seconds later it exploded, turning a bad situation into an impossible one. In the midst of the chaos, a couple of guards from the other vehicles were miraculously able to extract themselves and crawl away. However, the young principal and her driver could not get out and perished inside the burning vehicle.

  The ground was littered with spent shell casings, indicating the overwhelming barrage of force the attackers used. A plume of black smoke rose from the burning wreckage of twisted steel, fractured glass, and melted plastic. It smoldered for two days.

  Because my primary responsibility in Baghdad was to manage the collection and dissemination of terrorism intelligence and the Sunni insurgency, I was best placed to figure out which sources might have access to the information we were seeking. Getting anyone to talk in this neighborhood would be a challenge. Those who weren’t affiliated with an insurgent group feared the insurgents and looked upon Americans as unwelcome occupiers and/or enemies.

  Nevertheless, we wanted to make the effort, to do what we could to identify the men who had ordered the attack, as well as those who had perpetrated it. After studying the case, I came up with a list of questions case officers could use with their sources to obtain insights on the attack. What was the purpose of the ambush? What, if anything, did the terrorists hope to achieve?

  To begin, I ran traces to see whether any of our sources had ever provided reporting on Yarmouk. Then I looked at a map and tried to gauge which of our sources lived or worked near Yarmouk and might have heard about the attack through friends, families, or insurgent contacts. Based on the results of those inquiries, I made a list of sources who might be able to give us some insights into those involved in the attack. Then I drew up a long list of questions that I hoped to have answered.

  One thing intelligence teaches you is that you don’t know what a source is capable of unless you really get to know him and continually explore “areas of opportunity” together. For instance, you could find that one of your sources has a brother who lives in Yarmouk and, even though he hasn’t reported on that area before, might be able to glean some information when visiting family. Therefore, simply reviewing notes in a source’s file is of limited use. To really know whether your source has or could gain access to the information of interest, you must have a discussion with him.

  Even when a source doesn’t seem to have natural access, if he is sufficiently motivated and resourceful, he can surprise you with the details he can obtain using basic elicitation skills. Even hearsay or thirdhand information can be useful in generating leads or helping to focus future collection efforts.

  When I approached the case officers and told them about the high-priority collection requirement, many invited me to directly debrief their sources in their next meetings. Those interviews were a welcome break from the sedentary existence of a CMO, the position that I held in Baghdad. My responsibility was to manage the acquisition and dissemination of intelligence collected in and around Baghdad
. Each CMO had a particular focus, and I was responsible for the terrorism and Sunni insurgent accounts. I partnered with the operations officers (the case handlers) to manage their terrorism reporters. We worked hard to determine access, design debriefing questions, assess responses, and verify the intelligence before we disseminated it to the intelligence community.

  In order to do this, CMOs are tied to their computers, processing intelligence reports, reading cables, interpreting SIGINT reports (signals intelligence gleaned from electronic communications and weapons systems), fielding questions from military colleagues, and coordinating on analytic assessments. We did this hour after hour, up to fifteen hours a day. The job was demanding on both the eyes and the intellect. I have never read and processed so much information in my entire life, and I will probably never do so again.

  But on the flip side, being immersed in so much data quickly turns a CMO into a subject matter expert and a great resource to collectors, managers, and headquarters staff. CMOs are keenly aware of the CIA’s collection strengths and weaknesses in their respective areas. Because CMOs read and process so many reports, we get to know our Areas of Responsibility (AORs) extremely well. You want an update on a region? Ask a CMO. You want to know which sources are doing a good job, which sources are suspect, and which might be fabricators or double agents? Ask a CMO. We know what solid intelligence looks like, what we expect to see from our sources, and what seems too good to be true or never pans out.

  Getting out of the office and into the debriefing room not only gave me a great opportunity to give my eyes a rest and put my debriefing skills to work, but it gave me the chance to meet the sources whose work I processed every day. What followed was the world’s best schooling in terrorism, because as I quickly discovered, it’s one thing to read about terrorists and quite another to meet them face-to-face.

  As expected, even after several debriefings, the details surrounding the ambush of the NGO officer remained murky. Although I had some idea which insurgent leadership the perpetrators were linked with, I was never able to confirm my suspicion. Nonetheless, every interview taught us something about the insurgents’ modus operandi—and how to protect our troops and Americans working in Baghdad.

  I admit it—I was thoroughly intimidated by one of the sources I had to interview during this investigation. That was because Abu Muhammad was not merely an aspiring jihadist. He wasn’t a website developer, mujahideen recruiter, or ideologue. He was a fighter. I’d read all about it in the file; the more I read, the more nervous I got. Not only did his jihadist pedigree give me the jitters, but his physical appearance in his file photo was equally striking. For people like him, the end always justifies the means.

  I had only been an intelligence officer in the CIA for three years, but I was keenly aware that the relationship with Abu Muhammad was a tricky one. True terrorists don’t decide to work with the CIA because they like us. We are the enemy, so their motivations for engaging us are complex. Some are tired of the killing, some feel used by their terrorist cohorts whose ideology and behavior they no longer buy into, and some just need the money. Others seek protection that they think is afforded to them when they partner with the all-knowing and omnipotent CIA. And some choose to work with the agency to take out their competitors and increase their own influence and prestige on the streets.

  Abu Muhammad had been a spin-off from another source who had provided valuable counterterrorism intelligence on terrorist leaders in Baghdad. A cold call from the case officer had surprised Abu Muhammad but had resulted in a series of meetings in which he agreed to work with the CIA against al-Qa’ida elements in his section of the city.

  In order to get the most out of the relationship, I would have to understand who Abu Muhammad was. I couldn’t motivate him unless I “got” him: What kind of personality did he have? What drove his decision making? What were his motivations? What did he like and what did he hate? What made him tick? Working with a terrorist source would require a solid understanding of his unique worldview and ideology. I didn’t have to agree with it (and I certainly didn’t), but I had to know where he was coming from.

  And here’s where it really got tricky: I had to befriend the terrorist. I had to find a way to bond with him in order to acquire the intelligence we needed to prevent attacks against Iraqi citizens and Coalition troops. Even when these guys cooperated, they always held something back in order to protect themselves and their interests. The game of intelligence in a war zone required diligent and concerted efforts to get the goods, to be sure the sources were sharing the details I needed to do my job.

  When debriefing any jihadist insurgent, most agents have three handicaps: we are Americans (strike 1), “nonbelievers” (strike 2), and CIA officers (strike 3). As I prepared myself to walk in and meet Abu Muhammad for the first time, I knew I had a fourth handicap: I was a woman.

  For the majority of these men, I was a complete oddity. I shouldn’t have been working outside the home, never mind serving my government in a war zone. I was a woman without the comfort and protection of her family, a foreigner thousands of miles away from home. Just by virtue of “exposing myself” to men who were not a part of my family, I was seen as a loose woman with no faith and no morals, rather than as a US government official.

  And in the sexually repressed culture of the Middle East, any opportunity for men to mingle freely with a woman feels illicit and exciting. I was keenly aware of this dynamic and knew that the second I walked in the room and Abu Muhammad laid eyes on me, his head would be in one place—the gutter. And there was nothing I could do about it. This was my life in the Middle East, for better or for worse. I was used to it. I’d been repeatedly propositioned, followed, harassed, touched, groped, and otherwise annoyed by the constant assumption that I was not respectable because of my gender, skin color, and nationality.

  Even my last name is suspect. Whenever I travel in the Middle East—Egypt, in particular—I am careful to act the part of the tourist, not someone who speaks Arabic or knows the country. This way, I’m not perceived as a threat. However, whenever airport security sees my last name, I can count on the following interrogation scene to play out every time:

  “Are you from the Middle East?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you have this name?”

  “Someone in my family is from the Middle East.”

  “Who? Your mother? Your father?”

  “No, my husband.”

  “Where is your husband from?”

  “He was born in Lebanon.”

  “He’s Lebanese?”

  “No, he’s Egyptian.”

  “Have you been to Egypt before?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Uh . . . many.”

  “Is your name Assad or Asaad?”

  When a person from the Middle East asks me this question, it is code for “Are you Muslim or Christian?” You see, there are two distinct versions of this name in Arabic. “Assad” means “lion.” This is the last name of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. If you bear this name, then people know that you are probably Muslim. The other version, pronounced “Asaad,” is the Christian name, which means “happier.”

  They ask this because they want to know how to categorize me in their minds. They are sizing me up to figure out how to interact with me.

  Because I have had to deal with it so many times, I have become an expert at figuring out how to handle the imbalance, how to establish myself as a respectable human being—despite being a woman, a Christian, and a CIA agent.

  Granted, it’s one thing to strike a balance with an immigration officer at the airport, but this wasn’t just any Arab male. Abu Muhammad was a terrorist. Bad guys at this level are incredibly intelligent. In fact, they are some of the most street-smart people you will ever meet. They can spot a fraud or a disingenuous personality a mile away. They can sense weakness or insecurity, and they can see right through you unless you are just as perceptiv
e as they are. Their ability to read people is a survival tactic developed over a lifetime to allow them to prosper in the cutthroat world of tribal politics and massively repressive, authoritarian regimes. They come from places where only the strong survive and master manipulators thrive. Respect isn’t freely given; it is earned. That’s why I was doing my best to calm down in the moments before my meeting with Abu Muhammad. I couldn’t afford to let him see my fear.

  I stood at the door of the debriefing room straightening my jacket and preparing for the grand entrance. Unlike in the movies, there was no two-way mirror for me to use to catch a glimpse of him before walking through the door. Instead, I closed my eyes and mentally rehearsed everything I knew about him. Finally, I turned off my phone, took out the battery, and shoved it back into my purse to prevent my phone from being used to geolocate the CIA compound or to remotely access the microphone and record the meeting. I tried to exhale slowly, hoping that breathing deeply would help me gain advantage over my shaking hands.

  It’s okay, I reassured myself. Be tough. Don’t show weakness. You can do this. You’ve been preparing for this moment your whole life. He may be a terrorist, but he’s a human being, too.

  To remind myself how pedestrian Abu Muhammad really was, I thought about the most recent requests he had made to his case officer. The terrorist, who surely had challenges such as ethnic cleansing and sectarian war to deal with, sought help for more personal concerns. It’s hard to imagine, but terrorists are real people, too, burdened with their own hang-ups and insecurities.

  This made me feel better and more confident in my mission. I told myself, I can deal with Abu Muhammad. No problem. And with that, I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  In the split second that Abu Muhammad saw me, he did exactly what I thought he would do. His eyes lit up with wonder and excitement. I imagined that in his head, he was high-fiving himself, exclaiming, Oh yes!