My Share of the Task(126)
“Oh, hello,” Mubassir said cheerily, in crisp English.
“You’re an English speaker,” Paul, the night interrogator said, taken aback.
“Yes,” Mubassir said dismissively, as if it weren’t news. “How long do you think this will be?” he continued in a bouncy, fluid tone, his posh Tory accent emerging as he spoke. “Because I do need to get back to my family.”
As on that night, in his subsequent sessions Mubassir appeared to enjoy the back-and-forth and peppered his answers with English colloquialisms. He was confident, charismatic, and clearly very intelligent.
Initial questioning at the outstations was often direct, aimed to use the detainees’ relative disorientation following capture to pry details that could unearth follow-on targets. By the time they arrived at the the screening facility, one or two days into their detention, detainees were more comfortable. They now knew they were fed three times a day and given a shower and weren’t going to be abused. As with all interrogations, the interrogators’ strategy was to manufacture, as fast as possible, a durable rapport that they could manipulate over time to our advantage. Interrogators offered as much information about themselves—making it up as necessary—as the detainees divulged, in order to establish a history of back-and-forth sharing and, ultimately, trust.
From Mubassir’s demeanor to his clownish smile to his showy displays of English proficiency, the interrogators detected an undercurrent of pride that might be tapped. They soon got him to talk more at length about himself. They learned that he fancied himself a religious scholar. He claimed a connection, through clerics, back to Mohammad, and claimed to be associated with the mufti of Iraq. They allowed Mubassir to lecture them on religious doctrine. Just as the interrogators built up semifictional personas inside the booth, their questions allowed Mubassir to project himself as a budding religious authority. It was an identity they wanted to tease out.
One of the early sources of suspicion with Mubassir was a picture of a man that had been taken on his street. J.C. had sent it up to the screening facility because the task force knew the man in the photo was one of a handful of runners for the Dardiri courier network, coordinated by Abu Ayyub al-Masri. (One of al-Masri’s aliases was Yusif al-Dardiri.) When Paul showed the picture to him, Mubassir waved it away, claiming not to know the man. The interrogators remained unconvinced, and Paul took to hanging it on the wall behind him at the start of each session, so that the picture faced Mubassir. For weeks, Mubassir refused to recognize the face in the picture.
Near the end of April, that changed during a marathon nighttime session with Paul. Toward the end, Mubassir was wearing thin. He had not seen his family in weeks. His mother was sick and needed surgery. And after five or six hours of conversation, he was tired. Again, Paul asked him about the photo. This time Mubassir sighed. He looked at the photo with a quiet resolve, as if he had made peace with the response he was about to give. “I love that man very much,” he said warmly. “That’s my brother.” He told Paul his brother’s name was Karim.
Interrogator and detainee exhausted, Paul left the booth so that he could get the information to his analyst. When he returned, Paul brought breakfast for the both of them. It was now early morning, and they sat together and ate. The warm eggs, fresh fruit, and cold juice they shared at the small plastic table marked a new stage in the relationship between the two men.
Mubassir divulged more about Karim and agreed when told the task force would bring him in. “Good, good,” he said. “I can talk to him. I know he’ll start talking.”
In Mubassir’s eyes, bringing in his brother was a way to keep him protected and a way to make his own part of the ordeal end by giving us what we needed in order for us to be done with him—even if it meant giving up a bigger fish. For us, it was a promising lead.