THEREâS A JOKE interrogators like to tell: âWhatâs the difference between a âgator and a used car salesman?â Answer: âA âgator has to abide by the Geneva Conventions.â
We âgators donât hawk Chevys; we sell hope to prisoners and find targets for shooters. Today, my group of âgators arrives in Iraq at a time when our country is searching for a better way to conduct sales.
After 9/11, military interrogators focused on two techniques: fear and control. The Army trained their âgators to confront and dominate prisoners. This led down the disastrous path to the Abu Ghraib scandal. At GuantĂĄnamo Bay, the early interrogators not only abused the detainees, they tried to belittle their religious beliefs. Iâd heard stories from a friend who had been there that some of the âgators even tried to convert prisoners to Christianity.
These approaches rarely yielded results. When the media got wind of what those âgators were doing, our disgrace was detailed on every news broadcast and front page from New York to Islamabad.
Things are about to change. Traveling inside the bowels of an air force C-130 transport, my group is among the first to bring a new approach to interrogating detainees. Respect, rapport, hope, cunning, and deception are our tools. The old onesâfear and controlâare as obsolete as the buggy whip. Unfortunately, not everyone embraces change.
The C-130 sweeps low over mile after mile of nothingness. Sand dunes, flats, red-orange to the horizon are all I can see through my porthole window in the rear of our four-engine ride. It is as desolate as it was in biblical times. Two millenia later, little has changed but the methods with which we kill.
âNever thought Iâd be back here again,â I remark to my seatmate, Ann. Sheâs a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in her early thirties, a tough competitor and an athlete on the air force volleyball team.
She passes me a handful of M&Mâs. Weâve been swapping snacks all through the flight. âWhen were you here?â she asks, peering out at the desertscape below. Her long blonde hair peeks out from under her Kevlar helmet.
âThree years ago. April of o-three,â I reply.
That was a wild ride. Iâd been stationed in Saudi Arabia as a counterintelligence agent. A one-day assignment had sent me north to Baghdad, shivering in the back of another C-130 Hercules.
Below us today the southern Iraqi desert looks calm. Nothing moves; the small towns we pass over appear empty. In 2003 it was a different story. We flew in at night, and I watched the remnants of the war go by from 200 feet, a set of night-vision goggles strapped to my head. Tracer bullets and triple A (antiaircraft artillery) arced out of the dark ground past our aircraft, our pilot banking the Herc hard to avoid the barrages. Most of the way north, the night was laced with fire. Yet when we landed at Baghdad International, we found the place eerie and quiet. Burned-out tanks and armored vehicles lay broken around the perimeter. I later found out theyâd been destroyed by marauding A-10 Warthogs.
On this return flight, we face no opposition. The pilots fly low and smooth. The cargo section of these C-130âs is always cold. I pop the M&Mâs into my mouth and fold my arms across my chest. The engines beat a steady cadence as the C-130 shivers and bucks. Ann puts her iPodâs buds in her ears and closes her eyes. Next to her, I start to doze.
An hour later, I wake up. A quick check out of the porthole reveals the sprawl of Baghdad below. We cross the Tigris River, and I see one of Saddamâs former palaces that Iâd seen in â03.
âWeâre getting close,â I say to Ann.
She removes her earbuds.
âWhat?â she asks.
Mike, another agent in my group, leans in from across the aisle to join our conversation. He offers me beef jerky, and I take a piece.
âWeâre getting close,â I repeat myself.
We reach our destination, a base north of Baghdad. The C-130 swings into the pattern and within minutes, the pilots paint the big transport onto the runway. We taxi for a little while, then swing into a parking space. The pilots cut the engines. The ramp behind us drops, and I see several enlisted men step inside the bird to grab our bags. Each of us brought five duffels plus our gun cases. When we walk, we look like two-legged baggage carts.
âWelcome to the war,â somebody says behind me.
After hours of those big turboprops churning away, all is quiet. We descend from the side door just aft of the cockpit. As we hit the tarmac, a bus drives up. A female civilian contractor jumps out and says, âOkay, load up!â
Just as I find a seat on the bus I hear a dull thump, like somebodyâs just slammed a door in a nearby buildingâexcept there arenât any nearby buildings.
A siren starts to wail.
âOh my God!â screams our driver. âMortars!â
She stands up from behind the wheel and dives for the nearly closed door, where she promptly gets stuck. Half-in, half-out of the bus she screams, âMortars! Mortars!â
We look on with wry smiles.
Another dull thud echoes in the distance. The driver flies into a panic. âGet to the bunkers now! Bunkers! Move!â She finally extricates herself from the door and I see her running at high speed down the tarmac.
âShall we?â I ask Ann.
âBetter than waiting for her to come back.â
We get off the bus and lope after our driver. We watch her head into a long concrete shelter and we follow and duck inside behind her. It is pitch black.
Another thump. This one seems closer. The ground shakes a little.
It is very dark in here. The bunker is more like a long, U-shaped tunnel. I canât help but think about bugs and spiders. This would be their Graceland.
âWatch out for camel spiders,â I say to Ann. Sheâs still next to me.
âWhatâs a camel spider?â she asks.
âA big, aggressive desert spider,â says a nearby voice. I canât see who said that, but I recognize the voice. It is Mike, our Cajun. Back home heâs a lawyer and a former police sniper. Heâs a fit thirty-year-old civilian agent obsessed with tactical gear.
âHow big?â Ann asks dubiously. Sheâs not sure if weâre pulling her leg. Weâre not.
âAbout as big as your hand,â I say.
âI hear they can jump three feet high,â says Steve. Heâs a thirty-year-old NCO and another agent in our group of air force investigators-turned-interrogators. This tall, buzz-cut adrenaline junkie from the Midwest likes racing funny cars in his spare time. In the States, his cockiness was suspect. Out here, I wonder if it wonât be exactly what we need.
âSeriously?â Ann asks.
Thump! The bunker shivers. Another mortar has landed. This one even closer.
âIâm still more worried about the spiders,â Mike says.
I have visions of a camel spider scuttling across my boot. I look down, but itâs so dark that I canât even see my feet.
The all-clear signal sounds. We file out of the bunker and make our way back to the bus. The driver tails us, looking haggard and embarrassed. Her panic attack cost her whatever respect we could have for her. We climb aboard her bus and she takes us to our next stop.
We âinprocess,â waiting in line for the admin types to stamp our paperwork. We have no idea whatâs taking them so long. Hurry up. Wait. Hurry up. Wait. Itâs the rhythm of the military.
Steve finishes first and walks over to us. âHey, one of the admin guys just told me a mortar round landed right around the corner and killed a soldier.â
The news is like cold water. Any thought of complaining about the wait dies on our tongues. Weâd been cavalier about the attack. Now it seems real.
A half hour passes before we are processed. Our driver shows up with the first sergeant and shuttles us across the base to the Special Forces compound where weâll stay until we accomplish our mission (whatever that is).
When I went home in June, 2003, I thought the war was overâmission accomplishedâbut it had just changed form. Weâve arrived in Iraq near the warâs third anniversary. The army, severely stretched between two wars and short of personnel, has reached out to the other services for help. Our small group was handpicked by the air force to go to Iraq as interrogators to assist our brothers in green. We volunteered not knowing what weâd be doing or where. Some of us thought weâd go to Afghanistan, perhaps joining the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Only at the last minute before we left the States did we find out where we were going. We still donât know our mission, but weâve been told it has the highest priority.
Weâre all special agents and experienced criminal investigators for the air force. One of us is a civilian agent and the rest of us are military. Iâm the only officer. Ever since the Abu Ghraib fiasco, the army has struggled in searching for new ways to extract information from detainees. We offer an alternative approach. In the weeks to come, weâll try to prove our new techniques work, but if we cross the wrong people, weâll be sent home. They told us that much before we left for the sandbox.
Later that night, after stashing our bags in our trailer homes, we sit in the interrogation unitâs briefing room down the hall from the commanderâs office.
My agents are called one by one into the commanderâs office for an evaluation. All of them pass. Finally, a tall, blackhaired Asian-American man with a bushy black beard steps into the briefing room. âMatthew?â he says to me.
I step forward. He regards me and says, âIâm David, the senior interrogator.â He leads me to the commanderâs office and follows me inside.
âHave a seat,â David says.
I look around. Thereâs only one free chair, a plush, overstuffed leather number next to one of the desks, so I settle into it.
The office is cramped, made even more claustrophobic by two large desks squatting in opposite corners. Behind one is a gruff-looking sergeant major. David sits next to the door. A third man watches me intently from the far corner, and the interrogation unit commander, Roger, sits behind a desk to my right.
Everyone else sitting in the room is in ergonomic hell. I feel uneasy as I take the best seat in the house. Roger explains to me that this is an informal board desig...