I was working purely on instinct. It was only later, after a lot of trial and error, that I realized I had come to a critical juncture in the interrogation process. This was the plea bargaining phase. We knew, and Rafi knew, that he was in trouble. My job was to convince him that honesty and cooperation was the better alternative to definite, long-term confinement. Once I’d made my pitch, I just kept repeating it to make sure he understood, and that nothing was going to happen one way or the other until he made his decision.
I had learned some valuable lessons in the hours I’d spent questioning Rafi. The most important was the value of complete sincerity. Whatever you were feeling at any given moment—anger, sympathy, even boredom—it had to be real. Otherwise they’d see right through you. Every emotion was operating at its peak level and it was essential to maintain that intensity. For a detainee, an interrogation is the most important moment of his life. His fate is hanging in the balance. An interrogator has to understand that and treat the situation accordingly.
At the same time I had to formulate each question and anticipate where the answers would lead. I was trying to stay a few steps ahead of the process, without seeming too calculated. I was also beginning to see the benefit of simply talking in a way that didn’t grate or irritate. Whether I was being reasonable or pissed off, what mattered was that my tone of voice didn’t get in the way of connecting with the prisoner.
These techniques came in handy as I continued the interrogation. After a few hours, Rafi began to give up more information. I knew what the ultimate goal was: to get actionable intelligence for the task force to do their job. That was one reason Jeff’s participation was so important. If our interrogation actually produced a lead, he’d have as much time and effort invested in the results as I did.
But in the meantime, I was also getting a better understanding of Saddam’s network of bodyguards. As my questioning continued, I pressed Rafi for details on the system. There were, he explained, three levels of bodyguards. The innermost circle was with the leader at all times. The second circle would usually secure locations in advance of Saddam’s travels throughout the country. The third circle was assigned to fixed locations. Rafi, for example, claimed to be the night shift guard at one of Saddam’s Baghdad palaces. But as helpful as Rafi’s information might have been, it wasn’t getting the task force any closer to real targets. It was time for me to step aside and let Jeff do his thing.
“Where are the terrorists?’ he asked Rafi, as if we were starting the whole process all over again.
“Terrorists?” Rafi asked with wide-eyed innocence.
Now it was Jeff’s turn to get in his face. “Listen, fucker,” he hissed. “American soldiers are getting shot at every day around here. Who’s doing it? Tell me or I swear to God I’ll die before you see the light of day again.”
“But I don’t know any terror—”
“Stop!” I jumped up, shouting. I didn’t want to hear those words coming out of his mouth. Once he was committed to that version of his story—that he had no knowledge or connection to the insurgency—I was sure he’d stick with it. He didn’t want to be caught lying again, and the last thing I wanted was to back him into that particular corner. I started talking fast, to keep him from trying to tell us what he didn’t know. “I have a job to do, Rafi. It’s very simple. I need to catch the bad guys. If I do my job, my boss will like me. If you help me do my job, I will like you. Then I will help you. Do you want me to help you, Rafi?”
He nodded meekly.
“I know you do. And the way you can help me is to give me the names and locations of as many terrorists as you can.”
“I want to say something,” he interjected before I stopped him again.
“Rafi, I’m going to let you speak. But please don’t tell me that you don’t know any terrorists.” I took a deep breath. “Now, what are you never, ever going to tell me again?”
“I am never going to tell you that I don’t know any terrorists.”
“Good,” I said. “So what do you want to say?”
“I want to say that when I am free, I hope you will not forget my name and that we can work together for many years to come.”
“Why would I set you free, Rafi?”
“Because I am innocent.”
I let myself get angry again. “Do I care about your innocence?” I shouted. “I only care about one thing, Rafi. What is that?” He looked confused and frightened. “My job, you shithead! That’s all I care about!” I stood over the prisoner and barked. “What is my job, Rafi?”
“To catch the bad guys, mister,” he replied, trembling.
“Are you going to help me catch the bad guys, Rafi?”
There was a long pause. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. When he finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “Mister, I have heard things but I don’t know for certain. I don’t want to bring trouble if I haven’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“You’re already in trouble, Rafi. Tell me what you heard.”
He looked from Jeff to me and back again. I could see him squirming, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water, trying to form the words. “Two men,” he said at last. “They work at a car wash. They hate Americans.”
Once he got over that hurdle, it turned out that Rafi had more information. He claimed that there were, at most, only three men remaining in Tikrit who had been connected with the regime. Rafi also knew their jobs, their family members, and where they had lived. As interesting as this was, I was getting increasingly frustrated and so was Jeff. During a break he told me that the men Rafi had named were insignificant during the regime and were likely to be even more insignificant now. According to Rafi, every other important person he knew had either fled or already been captured. He kept insisting he had no idea where we could find any active insurgents. I was beginning to wonder just how helpful this prisoner could be. Wouldn’t it already be well known that he was in American custody? Wouldn’t the insurgents have already changed their locations and routines as a precaution? Even if Rafi knew where they were, wouldn’t they be long gone? But I kept my doubts to myself. I wanted Rafi to think that he was giving us what we wanted, to keep alive his hope of being freed.
It was midnight before we finished with Rafi and took him back to the prison. Back at the house, Jeff and I compared notes on the interrogation.
“What do you think?” Jeff asked me. Behind the simple question was another test. I was the professional interrogator. He wanted to hear my “expert” analysis.
“I don’t think there’s any way that guy doesn’t know something,” I said. “He’s a former bodyguard and a nephew of Saddam. But three former low-level guys in the regime who are now working at a car wash aren’t what we’re looking for.”
“Yeah,” Jeff agreed. He sounded as tired as I was. “That shit was weak. But I’ll run it by Matt and Jack and see what they think.”
I headed to the dining room for something to eat. I needed to think over what had just happened. On one level the interrogation had been a failure. We hadn’t gotten actionable intelligence, at least as far as I could tell. Maybe Rafi really didn’t know anything. Or maybe he did and I just hadn’t pried it out of him.
But, in another way, I was exhilarated by the experience. For the first time since I’d signed up for the job, I realized that I had an innate capability to be an interrogator. I may not have known exactly how to do it yet, but I knew I could do it.
As I sat alone at the table, I reviewed all the mistakes I had made over the last several hours. I had asked unnecessary questions; let Rafi see where I was going before I got there; lost my temper when I should have stayed calm and vice versa. I now had firsthand experience in some of the many ways to screw up an interrogation. I couldn’t tell myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, but at least I knew what the mistakes were. Slowly I was beginning to learn how to keep the details straight; how to close out the paths of evasion and how not to let a prisoner see the traps I was laying for him. I was beginning to understand not just how to ask questions but why I was asking the questions. Raw information was less important than what that information told me about the prisoner I was questioning: what he was thinking, what he was afraid of, what he had to hide. The point wasn’t just to catch him in a lie. I would quickly come to realize that most of what my prisoners told me were lies. It was the reason they were lying that was important.