The Interrogator's War - inside the secret war against Al Qaeda, by Chris Mackey with Greg Miller
reviewed by Hugh McManners

When civil servants decide to axe specific military capabilities to save money, they should be required by law to wait at least five years. Before the Falklands War, Britain's amphibious forces were in the process of being dismantled; and as this excellent and well-timed book explains, cost-cutters were reducing the US Army's vital battlefield interrogation and counterintelligence capability by more than 70%, as the terrorist threat to the USA was escalating: bombings of the World Trade Centre in 1993, the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi in 1996, the US Embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the suicide ram-bombing of the warship USS Cole off Yemen in 2000.

Former US Army interrogator Chris Mackey with co-author and journalist Greg Miller, have produced an extensive, colourful and very important book, showing us at first hand the secret mind-war that lies at the heart of the fight against Al Qaeda. Interrogation is its primary weapon: as Mackay writes in his introduction "The principal dangers America faces are no longer embodied by armies and weapons, but by individuals and intentions…. the only hope for unearthing a plot may rest on our ability to unlock the secrets in an operative's mind."

But the US Army started its war against terror with only 108 Arabic-speaking interrogators, and a human intelligence organisation that was broken, downsized and degraded. Few members of its military intelligence units had experience of the detailed and exhaustive detective work by which interrogation teams separate hard-line terrorists from innocent farmers. Firepower, technology and military superiority are irrelevant in this war. And this lack of experience and capability is what lies behind the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, which Mackay condemns: "[we] felt bitterly betrayed by what appeared to be a small number of sadists operating without a shred of oversight."

Mackey explains how he learned the interrogation process in military training, and then how, in a grim and miserable makeshift facility at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan, and later at Bagram, adapted tactics designed to extract intelligence from Soviet soldiers, for Arab, Afghan, Pakistani, British and even German Moslems captured in Special Forces operations.

The Geneva Conventions were strictly adhered to, especially Article 3, which forbids "violence to life and person…. mutilations, cruel treatment and torture…. outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." One lapse of self-control would earn an interrogator several years in the notorious Fort Leavenworth military jail. Mackey says the abuses at Abu Ghraib set back all the good work he and his team carried out: "The more a prisoner hates America, the harder he will be to break. The more a population hates America, the less likely its citizens will be to lead us to a suspect."

The learning process was difficult, especially once the prisoners realised the Americans were not going to hurt them. In mid February, a pile of documents from a Special force raid on the Al Farook terrorist training camp was found to contain the Al Qaeda guide to resisting interrogation. Mackey and his team immediately recognised the tactics described in this training manual from the many interrogations they had already carried out, including baiting the Americans to trick them into violence that leaves bruises or scars that can be shown to the Red Cross. The American aversion to using torture was presented as a weakness - "because they are not warriors". But other sections of the Al Qaeda manual described what "brothers can expect" from interrogators in Arab countries: "Hanging with arms tied behind backs, filleting people, skinning arms with knives, drilling knee caps, gouge out eyes, cut out tongue…"

Mackay was infuriated to learn that the manual was absolutely right about the Americans being unable to do anything to their prisoners, apart from feeding them "halal meals-ready-to-eat and giving them showers a couple of times a week. …At the time it felt like a terrible weakness."

It's generally agreed that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. Mackey takes this one stage further by quoting various examples of prisoners who only started giving reliable information once they were convinced that the Americans were not going to torture them. But interrogations only started to produce results after 12 to 16 hours, which runs contrary to the Geneva Conventions rules regarding sleep deprivation. So Mackey ensured that prisoner and interrogator had the same amount and quality of sleep and food. Hitherto, the prisoners had enjoyed far more sleep and more regular meals than their hard-worked inquisitors, and unsurprisingly were better able to resist interrogation.

But Mackey also explains how the pressure to get results can lead to a gradual slackening of rules, and how in the "processing" of large numbers of people, bureaucracy can create seemingly unavoidable inhumanity. Only some of those captured are practising terrorists. This is a war to be won through a combination of kindness, respect and superb administration in which the innocent are identified and sent home as quickly as possible.

© 2006 Hugh McManners. All rights reserved.

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