“Why was I allowed to come here?”
“You are here because Reuven Ayalon vouches for you, and because Reuven has a lot of friends.” He gave Tom a sidelong glance. “I was against it at first. It breaks the rhythm, and we’re almost finished with her. But I was finally convinced that in the long term your visit will bear valuable fruit for us as well as you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t be so quick to thank. Besides, Reuven or no Reuven, you are here because I was told you are able to ask questions exactly the way we do-in Arabic or French that doesn’t sound as if it’s being spoken by a Yankee Doodle dandy.”
The words came out “Yenki Duudul dendi.” The Israeli looked at Tom, his face serious. “You speak even your French with a slight Tunisian accent. There is no hint of American in your speech.”
“Is that important?”
Salah shook another cigarette out, put it to his lips, and replaced the pack in his pocket. “It is critical. It is important for some of the detainees to believe they have been shipped somewhere that is not Israel. And so there is no Hebrew spoken anywhere in this facility. No English either. Arabic, French, and sometimes Farsi, Russian, or German.”
“Isn’t that skirting the ethical edge?”
“Ethical? It’s not ethical to murder civilians, my friend. I told you: I am against torture. I am against abuse. But I’ve already been condemned to fight with one sleeve pinned to my shoulder, my friend. I’m not willing to tie my only good hand behind my back, too.” Salah withdrew a greenish bandanna from his coveralls, blew his nose loudly, then stuffed the handkerchief back in his back pocket. “So, we can-and we do without apology-hold detainees in solitary confinement for years if we feel it is necessary. Just like the French, incidentally. In fact, a major factor in our high success rate is the complete isolation in which these terrorists are kept. You Americans tend to coddle prisoners-even terrorists. You cave in to human rights organizations. You allow lawyers, family visits, and other amenities. I cannot believe what I saw when I visited high-security facilities in the United States some years ago. Cable television. Gyms. Libraries. It was like sending your criminals to college.”
“That was a civilian prison.”
“But your so-called white supremacists were incarcerated there alongside rapists and bank robbers. You treat your own terrorists as if they were burglars or carjackers.” Salah’s hand made a dismissive gesture. “Terrorists are not criminals. They are enemy combatants, and they deserve no coddling. You Americans often ignore the realities. That kind of fuzzy thinking pervades your abilities, especially in this kind of total war.” He exhaled smoke through his nose. “Jihad, they call it. All-out effort, remember? Sometimes I think you Americans forget that when you deal with enemy combatants.”
“That’s not what I hear about the ones being held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo.”
“For you, Iraq and Afghanistan are the exceptions to the rule, believe me.” Salah pulled on the collar of his sterile coveralls. “Besides, you Americans have very few trained interrogators.” His black eyes flashed in Tom’s direction. “You had to send more than fifty of your paramilitary people here just after the Kandahar and Baghram facilities were established in Afghanistan because your CIA didn’t have any qualified personnel.Any. Unbelievable. So we had to teach them the basics, believe me. But it didn’t matter, because they all lacked Arabic, not to mention Pashto, or Urdu, or Uzbek. A friend of mine at AMAN14told me when the 9/11 attacks occurred, there were less than a hundred Arabic-speaking interrogators in your entire army-and perhaps another hundred and fifty in the reserves. And CIA? It was a joke. At the military interrogation center in Kandahar, not a single CIA officer had sufficient Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, or Farsi to do proper interrogations. And yet the most critical element is the ability to speak in the detainee’s native tongue and understand his culture. You cannot do the job using an interpreter.”
Well, Salah was right about that. The 4627 Company had more Top Secret-cleared four-plus Uzbek speakers than CIA did these days. In fact, in the spring of 2002, CIA had approached 4627 to recruit, vet, and hire language-capable interrogators for Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Langley was offering $2,500 a day plus expenses for ninety-day deployments, and they wanted a minimum of a dozen people. The math was great: 4627’s profit on two ninety-day cycles would be $3.2 million-and Langley wanted a minimum of six ninety-day cycles. But Tony Wyman turned the Agency down cold. It was a slippery slope, he said. One bad apple-one case of prisoner abuse in the newspapers-and the firm’s credibility worldwide would be jeopardized. Let some other contractor take the money and run.
And yet Tom understood the need. It often took Americans weeks to accomplish what trained native speakers could do in a matter of days because the Americans too often had to rely on interpreters-linguists, they were euphemistically called by the Pentagon. It was like trying to play the old kids’ game of telephone. Tom knew it was impossible to recruit an agent using an interpreter. So why the hell did the numbskulls at DOD and Langley believe it would be productive to interrogate hard-core al-Qa’ida militants-Wahabists who were willing to die for their beliefs-that way? It made no sense at all.
Besides, interrogating terrorists was an art as well as a science. The Israelis had perfected it out of necessity. In the United States, until 9/11 at least, terrorism had been largely considered a criminal activity not an act of war. The FBI’s techniques for interrogating terrorists were exactly the same as they were for interrogating bank robbers or mafiosi. Christ, the Bureau was surveilling potential militants at Washington, D.C.’s Massachusetts Avenue mosque the same way they’d taped comings and goings at the old Soviet embassy on Sixteenth Street. Sure, they had audio as well as video from bugs planted inside the Mosque and adjacent grounds. But rumor was, translation lag time at SIOP15was about nine months.
In the military, interrogator trainees at Fort Huachuca were still using Cold War scenarios. The only change was that instead of calling the role-players Boris, they were calling them Muhammad. At CIA, the subject of prisoner interrogation still took up less than six hours of the basic intelligence operations course taken by trainees at the Farm. Didn’tanybody Get It? Tom zipped the coveralls up to his throat. “Will there be a transcript available to me?”
“We will give you a DVD-full audio and video, as well as a transcript, in Microsoft Word format.” He watched as the American sat on the edge of the straight-backed chair and pulled on the scuffed black leather boots. “Obviously, you will not possess these materials unilaterally.”
“I understand.” Tom yanked the laces secure and tied them in a double bow. “How long can I have with her?”
“As much time as you need. But I don’t think you’ll need a lot of time.”
“Why is that?”
“I believe we were pretty thorough. Reuven has made the interrogation transcripts available, yes?”
“He has-except for the summary and several pages that were redacted.”
“That was because I wanted you to come to your own conclusions. Afterward, we’ll compare notes. You will give me your evaluation of the situation, and I will give you mine.”
“That’s fair.”
“Thank you.” Salah spat the cigarette from his lips and ground it out against the floor. “Remember: you’ll interrogate the woman in French, please.”
“Will do.” Tom looked at Salah. “I could even use a Marseille accent if you think it would be effective.” The accent was something he’d worked on as he created the persona he’d use during the interrogation.