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Chapter Four

Talking to the Interrogators

For the security and intelligence services, talking to terrorists is often the most effective way of countering them. Information and admissions gained during interrogation are vital not only in stopping terrorist attacks and bringing their perpetrators to justice, but in helping to paint a bigger picture of the organisation to which they belong. And there’s always the possibility of a bonus: turning the suspect and sending him back to the organisation from which he came in order to provide HUMINT – human intelligence – from within.

The problem is that most terrorist suspects refuse to talk, and many have been trained in Afghan camps by Al Qaeda in counter-interrogation techniques. Time and again FBI agents I talked to emphasised the need to establish a rapport with the suspect that might eventually help to break his resistance. To do so, they said, required experience, patience and persistence – and the additional element of luck. These agents were institutionally and personally opposed to the ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques that the George W. Bush administration authorised the CIA to use in the wake of 9/11 to break important terrorist suspects, known as ‘High Value Targets’ (HVTs). They believed that such methods were not only ineffective, but counter-productive (see pp. 131, 293–4), and that talking to terrorists produced more valuable intelligence than subjecting them to humiliation and physical suffering that was tantamount to torture. The interrogation of the Al Qaeda suicide bomber Mohammed Al-Owhali by the FBI agent Steve Gaudin is a perfect case study. Al-Owhali miraculously survived the bombing of the US Embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in 1998, at the time I was still involved in the Northern Ireland peace process. The story illustrates not only the classic rapport-based interrogation techniques, but the evolution of Al Qaeda and its modus operandi through the 1990s.

After the Soviet defeat in 1989, the United States pulled the plug on Afghanistan. America’s purpose had been served: the Soviet Union had been humiliated; the West had won. Afghanistan was now left to its own devices. Nation-building didn’t feature on the United States’ agenda.

Osama Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, a hero and celebrity who had vanquished the Russian infidels and was now ready to put his Afghanistan-acquired military skills and his nascent Al Qaeda organisation at the service of the Saudi royal family. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bin Laden offered to summon his army of Afghan veterans to wage jihad against the Iraqi interloper. His offer was politely refused by King Fahd, on the grounds that the Kingdom had a better offer from the Americans, backed by their British allies, in a coalition that included Muslim forces from Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh and, of course, Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was thanked, and the hope was expressed that he would continue to serve Saudi Arabia as his family had done so loyally over so many years.¹