Hard Measures Read online

  “Jose Rodriguez guided some of the CIA’s greatest counterterror victories, and his story is one of courage, commitment, and decisiveness. In this book, he provides concrete details about the value of the Agency’s interrogation program of terrorists—a program which thwarted terrorist attacks and has made America safer.”

  —General Michael V. Hayden, USAF (Ret.) former Director of Central Intelligence

  “Courageous CIA officers putting themselves in harm’s way to protect the nation from ruthless terrorists—only to find they are undercut and second-guessed by posturing politicians. That’s not the plot of some new novel—but the real-life story of Jose Rodriguez. In Hard Measures he offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the men and women who stopped al Qa’ida’s second-wave of attacks and the price they paid for doing so.”

  —Vince Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Kill Shot

  TERRORISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF THE TOUGHEST TARGETS ON WHICH TO COLLECT INTELLIGENCE. The secrets you want to steal frequently don’t reside in computer systems, which can be hacked, or safes, which can be broken into, but in the inner recesses of a handful of individuals’ minds.

  The cliché about intelligence work is that it is like working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle but not having the box top to show you what the finished picture should look like. If only it were that easy. In fact, it is more like working on a million-piece puzzle with no box top, and having millions more random pieces that look like they might fit, but actually are from different puzzles altogether.

  It fell to us to make sense of the countless fragments of information and to take action on the chunks of the puzzle, which represented a real and growing threat to the United States and our allies. —from Hard Measures

  WHILE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC IS AWARE OF THE CIA’S USE OF HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL “ENHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES,” FEW KNOW THE MAN WHO, IN THE WAKE OF SEPTEMBER 11, LED ALL U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM OPERATIONS AND OVERSAW THE USE OF THOSE PROCEDURES—PROCEDURES THAT OBTAINED VITAL AND TIMELY INTELLIGENCE AND HELPED SAFEGUARD THE NATION FROM FUTURE ATTACKS.

  Puerto Rican–born Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., served the United States for twenty-five years as an undercover officer before bringing his wealth of field knowledge to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center; now, in this riveting account and fascinating life story, one of America’s top undercover operatives reveals how hard measures have derailed terrorist activity targeting the U.S., and saved countless American lives.

  Fully disclosed here for the first time are the undercover operations and tactics implemented during the George W. Bush presidency—which were approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government, certified as legal by the Department of Justice, and supported by bipartisan leadership of congressional intelligence oversight committees.

  But as the shock of 9/11 faded, the support that the intelligence community enjoyed and deserved gave way to shortsighted and potentially dangerous political correctness. One by one, the tools needed to successfully fight terrorism were banished, and the men and women who volunteered to carry out our nation’s orders in combating al-Qa’ida found themselves second-guessed, hamstrung, and investigated—including Rodriguez himself. In effect, the United States has chosen to willfully and unilaterally disarm itself in the war on terror.

  In Hard Measures, Rodriguez convincingly argues for the techniques used, and uncompromisingly details when these techniques were necessary, why they worked, and how, ultimately, they contributed to the capture of the world’s most-wanted terror operatives, including Usama bin Ladin.

  From law school student to CIA recruit to his role as America’s top spy, Rodriguez’s full story is one of utmost importance—a rare, insider’s look at an issue that demands attention. Above all, it’s a reasoned, imperative, and fully informed case for hard measures, and an explosive and gripping account of the real war on terror—where it’s been and where it’s headed.

  JOSE A. RODRIGUEZ, JR., was born in Puerto Rico and raised in South America. He received his undergraduate and law school degrees from the University of Florida before being recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency and serving his country for thirty-one years.

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  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH © 2012 GREG E. MATHIESON, SR. / MAI / LANDOV

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG MATHIESON

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

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  Copyright © 2012 by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Threshold Editions Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Threshold Editions hardcover edition April 2012

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  Designed by Renata Di Biase

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rodriguez, Jose A., 1948–

  Hard measures / Jose Rodriguez ; with Bill Harlow.

  p. cm.

  1. Rodriguez, Jose A., 1948– 2. United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Officials and employees—Biography. 3. United States. DCI Counterterrorist Center. 4. Intelligence officers—United States—Biography. 5. Terrorism—United States—Prevention. I. Harlow, Bill, 1950– II. Title.

  JK468.I6R63 2012

  327.12730092—dc23

  [B]

  2012003698

  ISBN 978-1-4516-6347-1

  ISBN 978-1-4516-6349-5 (ebook)

  All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication or information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

  For the men and women of the CIA, whose skill, dedication, and selfless service have always inspired my admiration, loyalty, and awe

  The author is donating a portion of his proceeds from this book to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, which was established in December 2001 to provide educational support to the children of CIA officers killed in the line of duty. For more information about the foundation please visit: www.ciamemorialfoundation.org.

  CONTENTS

  Preface: Who I Am

  1 Rashid Rauf

  2 Latin America Division

  3 Abu Zubaydah

  4 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

  5 Taking Prisoners

  6 Regime Change

  7 Investigations

  8 The Tapes

  9 What We Do

  10 The CIA Under Obama

  Afterword

  Photographs

&nb
sp; Acknowledgments

  Preface

  WHO I AM

  I am Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., the Puerto Rican–born son of two teachers. I grew up largely in South America and in the Caribbean, coming to the continental United States for the first time for any length of time when I attended the University of Florida, where I received my BA and law degree. For the next thirty-one years I served my country, undercover, as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  After September 11, 2001, I was assigned to the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. There, I was responsible for helping develop and implement the Agency’s techniques for capturing the world’s most dangerous terrorists and collecting intelligence from them, including the use of highly controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

  I am certain, beyond any doubt, that these techniques, approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government, certified as legal by the Department of Justice, and briefed to and supported by bipartisan leadership of congressional intelligence oversight committees, shielded the people of the United States from harm and led to the capture and killing of Usama bin Ladin.

  What follows is the story of how my colleagues and I came to take those hard measures and why we are certain that our actions saved American lives.

  HARD MEASURES

  Chapter 1

  RASHID RAUF

  I’m tired of you Americans saying we are not doing enough to fight the terrorists.” General Ashfaq Kayani, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, was polite but firm during the meeting at his home in Islamabad in August 2006. “We may soon have a chance to conduct a major operation—what I need to know is whether you are with us or not.”

  The confrontation was not the first and certainly not the last between his organization, the ISI, and mine, the CIA. As head of our National Clandestine Service, my mission was to oversee the running of covert operations, the recruitment of spies, and the theft of secrets on behalf of the United States. Since 9/11, the Pakistani intelligence service had arguably been our most important foreign relationship—but it never was or ever will be a smooth one.

  Unbeknownst to me, and presumably to General Kayani, that sweltering August day in 2006, Usama bin Ladin and members of his family had recently taken refuge in a villa in Abbottabad, less than fifty miles northeast of where we sat.

  We met in Kayani’s home on a tightly guarded Pakistani military base. The residence resembled something you might see in an affluent American suburb. There were several parts to the structure, one for his living quarters, another section that appeared to be an office, and a third area where the general met visitors like me. He was casually dressed but all business. After subordinates served fruit juice and tea, Kayani let me know what was on his mind.

  A casual eavesdropper on my conversation with General Kayani might think, well, of course you would say yes to the general’s request, and of course the U.S. and allied governments would applaud your action. But in the world of counterterrorism, nothing is straightforward.

  The loyalties of the ISI will probably always be suspect from an American perspective. While some senior officers like General Kayani proclaimed their support for our counterterrorism efforts, others a couple of echelons below him were happily supporting al-Qa’ida and the Taliban, an organization that the ISI (with some U.S. help) had essentially created years earlier. How much ISI officers knew about Bin Ladin’s whereabouts had always been hotly debated.

  I had come to Pakistan along with the CIA’s director, General Mike Hayden, in part to try to nurture the tricky relationship between the Agency and the ISI. After several days of meetings, Hayden returned to the United States, but I stayed behind to probe the state of relations between our two organizations. My concern was more than bureaucratic. We were in the midst of a looming crisis, one in a series of tense moments that regularly marked our relations with the ISI. I had spent the day flying around on a Russian-built Pakistani MI-17 helicopter visiting Peshawar, the Khyber Pass, and remote tribal areas where the CIA and ISI tried to work together against terrorist targets.

  On my arrival back in Islamabad, CIA officers alerted me to some new intelligence that a terrorist cell in the U.K. that we and our British allies had been monitoring had selected specific transatlantic flights that they planned to bring down in an attack that would rival 9/11 in scale. “Coño!” I said to myself. There had been many chilling intelligence reports over the past five years, but the more I learned, the more this seemed to me the most concrete and imminent threat to the U.S. since the World Trade Towers were brought down. The near-unanimous concern about a second attack that had galvanized our nation in the days, weeks, and months following 9/11 had since abated among politicians, the media, and the general public, but those of us on point in the fight knew that the threat had not gone away.

  In recent months, our British allies had learned of a U.K.-based terror cell and its plans to blow up as many as ten commercial airliners as they headed from Britain to New York, Washington, D.C., and California. Through excellent intelligence work, British intelligence and police officials had monitored plotters as they implemented an ingenious plan of draining soft drink bottles and replacing the contents with concentrated hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals, including the use of the powdered breakfast drink Tang as an explosive accelerant. The altered containers could easily pass through routine airport screenings that were in use at the time. Had they been detonated while all ten planes were at altitude over the Atlantic, there would have been a loss of life in the thousands. Evidence of exactly how the planes were brought down would have been lost at sea, and the panic in the international transportation arena would have been devastating.

  The effort British authorities devoted to tracking the plotters in their country was extraordinary. It was said to be the largest domestic surveillance effort ever conducted in the U.K. There seemed to be nineteen potential suicide bombers involved. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), that was the exact number of people who carried out the hijackings on September 11, 2001.

  The Brits originally learned of the plot by finding that one of the plotters had traveled from the U.K. to meet with a known al-Qa’ida operative in Pakistan.

  The central figure in the plot was a man by the name of Rashid Rauf, a dual British/Pakistani national. The Brits knew a fair amount about him. Rauf was said to have been born in England of Pakistani parents and raised in the West Midlands city of Birmingham. He disappeared from the U.K. in 2002 in the middle of an investigation of the murder of his uncle. While never charged in that crime, he was definitely a “person of interest” to British authorities, not only for that matter, but also because of his known ties to violent Islamic militant groups in Pakistan. But they needed to know more about him.

  As troublesome as U.S. relations with Pakistan can be, our British allies can have an even more difficult time getting full cooperation from the ISI. Hard feelings dating back more than six decades to the Raj when Britain ruled the region meant that often the U.S. was able to get cooperation from the Pakistanis in ways that eluded the Brits.

  So the CIA took the lead in working with the ISI to try to track down Rauf and others in Pakistan who were behind the plot that was brewing in the U.K. Using our clandestine technical resources, we were able to determine that planning for the strike was coming from North Waziristan in the mountainous Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

  The CIA approached the ISI to see if they could shed additional light on the whereabouts and plans of Rashid Rauf. Although the plotters in the U.K. were under intense surveillance, at the time we did not know the whereabouts of Rauf. During his visit to Pakistan, General Hayden let senior Pakistani officials know that we were very interested in him.

  In my meeting with General Kayani a few days later I was told that the Pakistanis had learned that Rauf might soon be traveling from the tribal areas toward the city of Bahawalpur. General Kayani saw that there was a rare opportunity to roll up a terrorist and he
asked me if the U.S. would support Rauf’s immediate capture. I made an on-the-spot decision. “Absolutely. We want this bad guy!” It seemed to me that telling Kayani anything else would have undermined the relationship we were trying to build with the ISI. I made the call despite a vague understanding that British authorities were hoping we would not move too rashly against Rauf. They wanted time to follow the trail of the U.K.-based terrorists to see what other leads might develop and to generate more court-admissible evidence for a future trial. But to me, the news that the plotters had moved to the point of selecting actual flights to bring down meant that we could not afford to wait.

  When my meeting with General Kayani ended, I departed for a local hotel. Brigadier General Azmat Hayam Khan, one of Kayani’s top subordinates and head of Pakistani counterterrorism, was supposed to host a dinner for me there as a way to build greater rapport with his senior officers. Such representational duties are among the more tedious of the chores of someone in my position, but necessary if you are hoping to maximize the support of your foreign counterparts.

  The general was in the front seat of an armored sedan. Security vehicles led and trailed us as we wove our way through the teeming streets of Islamabad and headed for the hotel. In the backseat, I was joined by the CIA’s chief of station in the region, whose name I am not at liberty to divulge. Within minutes, Azmat’s cell phone rang. I could hear him fire off a series of urgent questions in Urdu. He turned to my colleague and said, “The plan, as General Kayani has said, is coming together. The terrorist Rauf is on a bus heading for one of our checkpoints. We want to proceed with his capture. Are you with us?”

  My colleague turned to me. “What do you think, boss?”