Purpose of Evasion Read online

  “There’s a bomb maker?” Terrorists in Nice and Berlin used trucks. Guns in San Bernardino. A large, coordinated attack that didn’t involve small arms would use explosives. 9/11 killed the chances of using planes. The scary truth was that pressure cookers, like the Tsarnaevs used at the Boston Marathon, were unstoppable.

  As ghastly as those attacks were, they didn’t really scare counterterrorism people. Even if there were mass casualties, those kinds of attacks didn’t demonstrate any deep embed of trained and bad-intentioned actors. One or two guys following an online cookbook and using consumer products could stay under the radar. Too diffuse.

  Sami knew Andy would not take a job like that. Those attacks were low profile until they happened. They were tough to stop and the narrative that inevitably emerged was: “Why didn’t they stop it?” If they were stopped, the narrative was that the putative perpetrators were Keystone Kops. There wasn’t a lot of upside for Andy, and there was a lot of risk to his success rate.

  “I could put a rookie on a bomb maker. Forget the explosive. Completely. That’s not where I need you.”

  “What? Online directed? If these guys are homegrown, where’s the foreign angle?”

  “That’s what’s fucking with everyone’s head, Dost. The full-time Spooks can’t find any connection to al-Qaeda, ISIS, Shebab, nothing. No SIGINT to indicate connections. No travel into a known terror group’s area of operations.”

  These were the common traits emerging from increasing radical attacks on cities in Europe: the attackers were radicalized in isolated, local communities and had identifiable connections to well-known groups, often through travel to an area of operations.

  “None of the signatures,” Andy continued. “And the attack looks weird. It doesn’t look like maximum destruction, or even standard fear and panic. It’s something more,” Andy struggled before settling on a word. “More political.”

  Terrorism was always political. Sami failed to see the distinction based on what he knew. And based on what he knew, there was something else that was coming up short.

  “I’m missing the plot somewhere. Why pull me in? I’m a foreign intel officer.”

  Avoiding the question, Andy continued.

  “You are my strongest independent asset. You have proven that you can direct a small team and deliver on the objective. Apart from that, you have been with me as long as anyone. I need someone who can look at this with fresh eyes. I don’t want it approached like a government case officer would. It’ll be too easy for whoever runs this team to reach back over to the agencies. You don’t have as many hang-ups as our newer guys. Look, Dost, you’re as far off the books as I am.” This last was as much a statement of his qualifications as it was a reminder to Sami. I own you. You have nowhere to run. “We need someone who can run this thing independently. Only a cell like ours can crack a cell like this.”

  “Foreign, Coach. Foreign.” Sami interrupted. “Otherwise find someone else.”

  “You’re the one who cited the problems raised by those pesky democracies. There’s a new sheriff in town, Dost. You’ve been around long enough that you are seeing your second paradigm shift. Hang around long enough and you’ll see ten more. Change domestic leadership, add in tactical shifts by the enemy, and the game is changing. Just like after 9/11.”

  “EO 12333 didn’t change, did it? Never mind, don’t answer. I’m sure it didn’t. I have a Google alert set. Until it does, I don’t collect on United States persons. I’ve seen this movie before, Coach. People lost their careers because some Yale lawyer on White House Counsel’s staff thought he was smarter than a fifth grader.”

  “And you almost went to jail, right Dost?”

  “That’s right. A bunch of others with me!”

  “It’s been almost ten years. We don’t bag groceries at Safeway, OK? Everyone has a close shave now and then. But it’s high time you come down off that cross.”

  “You’re mixing your religious metaphors. My people don’t do crosses, remember?”

  The anger coming off Sami’s last comment was controlled but palpable. Both men took a breath. Their sandwiches sat ignored, relegated to their role as props. This was not their first time rehashing this argument. It was nuanced but significant.

  In seeking a scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks, the media had instigated a circular firing squad immense in scale even for Washington. Every three-letter agency had their knives out for the others. The narrative that emerged was one of bureaucratic stove piping. Information gathered by the CIA or NSA in the course of their international espionage, which would have been integral to stopping domestic attacks by al-Qaeda, was being withheld from the FBI. Crimes on U.S. soil were under the FBI’s jurisdiction, but the Bush White House concluded that when the global terror threat came ashore, it meant war. Not crime. And regardless of jurisdictional issues, the chain of command for warfare ended with one man: The Commander in Chief.

  The U.S. government might – and, in Iraq, did - find venues where they could wage this war with bombing sorties, infantry battalions, and armor brigades, but that would not be enough. It would be a new kind of war, geared toward a new threat: asymmetric attacks against soft targets on U.S. soil. Although POTUS was commander in chief of a military that had starred on global battlefields during the 20th Century thanks to conventional might as measured in carrier groups and fighter brigades, the terror threat was better answered by the clandestine services than the Pentagon. That meant that intelligence agencies were involved in warfare, and they reported to the President.

  Promulgated by President Reagan, Executive Order 12333 was always more well known for prohibiting CIA assassinations, but 12333 also outlined who intelligence agencies could and could not surveil, what information they could and could not collect, and with whom they could share that information.

  After 9/11, White House counsel and staff counsel at several agencies seized the moment to offer reinterpretations of 12333. The lawyers argued that many of the rules that governed “spying,” including those outlined in EO 12333, were no longer applicable because the activities engaged in by the CIA were not intelligence activities, but military activities.

  With a broadened scope, and a public skeptical of those few media voices who wondered what became of civil liberties, the administration grabbed the authority it felt was necessary to keep Americans safe and prosecute the War on Terror.

  There was fallout from this decision. Some resulted from overreach at the operational level, based on a command directive to kill bad guys and prevent another attack. No one told the twentysomething reservists guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib to walk their charges on dog leashes and turn the whole exercise into a photo shoot. That kind of stupid couldn’t be taught.

  But other activities were doctrinal, briefed and approved by the highest levels of government. Seven years after 9/11, many were well-documented. Waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay, and enhanced interrogation had all became household terms.

  The Bush doctrine was hotly-debated in a 2008 presidential campaign where the War on Terror was a central issue. When the bottom fell out of the economy, terrorism took a brief backseat in the American zeitgeist, for the first and only time since 2001. But the financial crisis defined the anti-climactic general election.

  A defining issue in the primary season had been the War in Iraq. Senator Hillary Clinton’s vote to invade was pivotal, as was discussion about the conduct of the War on Terror more broadly. Senator Barack Obama scored points in painting his opponent as too closely aligned with the outgoing Republican administration’s position. He also made promises. Promises that people would be held accountable.

  Perhaps people like Sami. He was not an interrogator, but he had translated when enemy combatants were being questioned. Some of these combatants had not come off battlefields, where they were bearing arms against the U.S. Instead, they were rounded up in house-to-house raids based on intel provided by analysts like Sami. Did that make them POWs? Or something else? No one was sure. And
if they weren’t sure what their status was, they couldn’t be sure how they should be handled. Some of these guys even ended up being Americans. If they were picking up American al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, what made that person different from an American al-Qaeda fighter arrested in Minneapolis?

  When Sami, and thousands of other low-enlisted and junior ranking civilian intelligence agents were given orders, they followed them. When White House Counsel said it was OK to hold someone indefinitely, they were held. When the same lawyer said it was OK to interrogate them, they were interrogated. And when the same lawyer said that if they wouldn’t talk, there were enhanced methods that were lawful because – by God – there was a ticking time bomb somewhere, they were waterboarded. Or shoved in a box. Or kept under hot lights. Or barraged with ear-splitting heavy metal music for days.

  An embarrassing series of leaks brought many of these techniques to light in global media. When the UK’s Foreign Secretary announced that details of a British investigation into the treatment of a Brit held at Gitmo could not be disclosed, for fear it would threaten the “special relationship,” a global feeding frenzy was on.

  After Obama’s inauguration, one UN high official called for George Bush to be prosecuted as a war criminal with the lapse of his head of state immunity. It was a diplomatic crisis for the U.S. before the new president’s lawyers arrived in early 2009 and parted with the interpretations of the Bush lawyers and the doctrine that had resulted. Geopolitics demanded a scapegoat.

  Individuals who had been in the interrogation rooms worried they would fit the bill. Some were policymakers, like Jose Rodriguez, a former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service who was investigated and ultimately not charged in the destruction of recordings of interrogations of top-ranking al-Qaeda detainees. Many others were junior enlisted personnel associated with defense intelligence, civilian employees of intelligence agencies, or contractors hired for their language skills. Nobodies. People like Sami. Some were even questioned. And their answers to questions about enhanced interrogation, or the surveillance of Americans, or other matters that became the subjects of investigations, boiled down to this: they were following orders. The Nazi defense. Fairly or unfairly, the comparison was drawn.

  In the end, prosecutions were few and far between. Witch hunts were more common. Sami did not know how much of his own escape he could attribute to the saving graces of Andy Rizzo versus the inability of Washington’s institutions to see anything through to completion rather than to the denouement of their political usefulness.

  It was undeniable that Andy became even more highly-regarded under the Obama administration. It was a time for the record books if you worked off the books. Funny thing about Presidents, on the way to the Oval Office they may decry how their predecessors have wielded presidential power, but once ensconced, they were reluctant to leave any of the clubs in the bag.

  It was a testament to Sami and Andy’s relationship, and to their shared depth of experience, that all this context passed between them in silence over the course of about ten seconds. Sami counted another ten to calm himself before speaking again.

  “What you are describing doesn’t sound legal. I understand that we take risks, but I’ll decide which risks I tolerate or not. I’m not looking for another evasive answer this time. Who are we working for?”

  Andy avoided the question, the previous twenty seconds of conversation, and all the post-9/11 political background. He referred to Sami’s jibe about crosses. “I’m glad you raised the subject of the mosque. That’s the final – and most important reason – that only you can lead this team.”

  “They’re Muslims,” Sami snickered. “I didn’t doubt it. My denial on this job is a matter of U.S. law, not sectarian loyalty. I remain, ever, the Muslim-at-your-service.”

  “Homegrowns are like everything else in politics, Dost. Local. By ‘the mosque,’ I don’t mean Islam. I mean Virginia. Masjid Almaany.”

  FOUR

  GEORGETOWN

  It took the better part of two hours for Sami to cover the distance from National Harbor to Georgetown, but his ongoing annoyance at Andy for scheduling meetings in places with poor Metro access never broke through. He was too distracted by the revelation that Andy reserved for the final moment of their discussion. Masjid Almaany.

  He accepted an assignment he did not want. This one, probably illegal. Not knowing where his orders came from was a huge problem. Who requested what information was something that mattered. His orders might come from a U.S. spy agency, but which one? Andy might have signed on with a non-spy agency or even a specific government official. Unless that official was an NSC member, the operation was illegal. The homeland angle made it unlikely, but the objective might have come from a U.S. ally. It was possible it all emanated from Andy himself. If that were the case, there was almost no circumstance in which Sami’s actions could be justified under law.

  But even the gravity of those concerns was subjugated to the thoughts that had been roiling since Andy mentioned Masjid Almaany. Prosperity Mosque. Built on a cul de sac in Loudon County, Virginia that was intended for a subdivision, the mosque bought the land at a fire sale when the developer needed cash to defend himself against securities fraud during the junk bond years.

  Since its construction in 1984, a community of prosperity, worthy of the name, had risen in Loudon and Fairfax counties. And there had been precious little controversy. Almaany was a mainstream mosque for D.C. types. The congregation boasted a fair number of members from the foreign embassies, heads of NGOs, and of late, a few high government officials. It had been under the direction of the same imam since the cornerstone was laid. Abu Muhammad. Legal name, Tahir Lakhani. Sami’s grandfather.

  But Andy didn’t mention Abu Muhammad. The rest of the conversation on the bench at National Harbor centered on another connection to Sami. Karim Sulemani was a childhood friend and college roommate. Sami’s work made it difficult to keep close ties to anyone. But it was the complications of Sami’s relationship with his grandfather, and his grandfather’s mosque, that had riven Sami and Karim’s relationship. Still, they met for dinner or drinks at least once a year. Sami knew Karim’s wife and children. Karim was not a terrorist. Not a radical, at all. He didn’t fit any profile.

  But Karim was all over the intelligence. There was little SIGINT, collecting that would be Sami’s unpleasant – illegal? – task. But there were connections all over the metadata. The known bad guys were talking to someone in the U.S., and soon after, that person was talking to Karim. There was no solid financial trail; again, it would be Sami’s team who would have to connect the dots, but there were red flags. A large cash transfer went into Karim’s account and went out again. He was driving a new truck.

  “Why does a guy with over $60,000 in student loans pay cash for an F-150?”

  It was Andy’s question, and despite Sami’s irritation with the source, it was a good one.

  “This is a huge break, Dost. You know it is. We don’t get this kind of break. Treat the case like you would any other. Put together your team for the supporting pieces but work Karim. He’ll trust you.”

  Sami pushed his confusion over the case aside. It was early and the picture would resolve as more information was gathered. His bias now should be for action. At the small coffee table in front of the TV, he started up his laptop and put out feelers to his preferred experts. Get the band back together. He dashed off his first secure message, hoping that the cyber guy he wanted from New Orleans would be willing and able to sign on. One thing he concluded before he even sent that first message was that his personal relationship with Karim would be close-hold. In fact, he would keep all the intel on Karim to himself until he had more pieces of the puzzle.

  Andy’s insistent avoidance of mentioning Abu Muhammad still gnawed. Whatever other issues he had with Andy, until now Sami never violated the one maxim that Andy preached when he joined.

  “We’re going black, Dost. Off the books.” It was the recruiting sp
eech of a lifetime, and almost ten years ago now. “There will be no more rules. And no cavalry. If we fuck up, we wear it. We keep the circle tight. We only read in people who need to know, and they only get as much as they need to perform. You have to trust me. More than that, we’ll have to trust everyone we work with.”

  Only now, Andy wanted Sami to walk back into the orbit of the one man they both knew he could not trust: the grandfather who raised him.

  FIVE

  ANNAPOLIS

  Hasan drove home from the Council of Muhammad meeting in a rare state of mellow satisfaction. Born in the U.S. and raised in comfortable suburban circumstances, Hasan Hamad Khalifa was - like all the other men in the cell he was building - a child of America. But he was a zealot for Egypt. His sense of the homeland’s history was well-informed, even if the solution he advocated for Egypt’s problems had changed little since he became convinced of its righteousness while a student at Columbia. The return of Sunni Islam rule was Egypt’s part to play in gaining back the glory lost with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

  During college, he developed an impassioned academic case for the ills that had befallen Egypt since it opened to the West. The privations of the French during the Suez partnership led to British occupation, which inexorably led to the disastrous Six-Day War with the Zionist state and the humiliation of the Camp David Accords. Nasser cozied up to the Soviets. Sadat to the Americans. And all along, Egypt grew poor and – worst of all - secular.

  For the self that Hasan willed into being in the Columbia years, this academic case had become a lifelong obsession. Every effort to restore Sunni traditions – the assassination of Sadat, the Luxor attacks, the installation of a Muslim Brotherhood government – was met with global sabotage and internal treachery. No longer would he opine. He acted.