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Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition'
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
12/04/05 "Washington Post" -- -- In May 2004, the White House
dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to
that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried
instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's
Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified
for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with
knowledge of the conversation.
Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully
imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and
would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request:
that the German government not disclose what it had been told even
if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert
action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and
transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the
CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.
The Masri case, with new details gleaned from interviews with
current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials, offers a
rare study of how pressure on the CIA to apprehend al Qaeda members
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has led in some instances to
detention based on thin or speculative evidence. The case also shows
how complicated it can be to correct errors in a system built and
operated in secret.
The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an
estimated 3,000 people, including several key leaders of al Qaeda,
in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. It is impossible to
know, however, how many mistakes the CIA and its foreign partners
have made.
Unlike the military's prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba -- where 180 prisoners have been freed after a review of
their cases -- there is no tribunal or judge to check the evidence
against those picked up by the CIA. The same bureaucracy that
decides to capture and transfer a suspect for interrogation-- a
process called "rendition" -- is also responsible for policing
itself for errors.
The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what
it calls "erroneous renditions," according to several former and
current intelligence officials.
One official said about three dozen names fall in that category;
others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose
identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA
interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent
college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one
official said.
"They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many,
many cases there was only some vague association" with terrorism,
one CIA officer said.
While the CIA admitted to Germany's then-Interior Minister Otto
Schily that it had made a mistake, it has labored to keep the
specifics of Masri's case from becoming public. As a German
prosecutor works to verify or debunk Masri's claims of kidnapping
and torture, the part of the German government that was informed of
his ordeal has remained publicly silent. Masri's attorneys say they
intend to file a lawsuit in U.S. courts this week.
Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone
else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She
just had a hunch."
The CIA declined to comment for this article, as did Coats and a
spokesman at the German Embassy in Washington. Schily did not
respond to several requests for comment last week.
CIA officials stress that apprehensions and renditions are among the
most sure-fire ways to take potential terrorists out of circulation
quickly. In 2000, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet said that
"renditions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted
terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from
occurring."
The Counterterrorist Center
After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab
potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world,
bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist
Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the
older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound.
With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea
was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.
The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic
was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held
responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for
this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive
nature of the subject.
To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group,
made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and
psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off
a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an
airport where local authorities wait.
Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard
procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they
blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then
administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a
diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their
destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative
countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including
Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to
in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times
have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern
Europe.
In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CTC was the place to
be for CIA officers wanting in on the fight. The staff ballooned
from 300 to 1,200 nearly overnight.
"It was the Camelot of counterterrorism," a former counterterrorism
official said. "We didn't have to mess with others -- and it was
fun."
Thousands of tips and allegations about potential threats poured in
after the attacks. Stung by the failure to detect the plot, CIA
officers passed along every tidbit. The process of vetting and
evaluating information suffered greatly, former and current
intelligence officials said. "Whatever quality control mechanisms
were in play on September 10th were eliminated on September 11th," a
former senior intelligence official said.
J. Cofer Black, a professorial former spy who spent years chasing
Osama bin Laden, was the CTC's director. With a flair for melodrama,
Black had earned special access to the White House after he briefed
President Bush on the CIA's war plan for Afghanistan.
Colleagues recall that he would return from the White House inspired
and talking in missionary terms. Black, now in the private security
business, declined to comment.
Some colleagues said his fervor was in line with the responsibility
Bush bestowed on the CIA when he signed a top secret presidential
finding six days after the 9/11 attacks. It authorized an
unprecedented range of covert action, including lethal measures and
renditions, disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks against the
al Qaeda enemy, according to current and former intelligence
officials. Black's attitude was exactly what some CIA officers
believed was needed to get the job done.
Others criticized Black's CTC for embracing a "Hollywood model" of
operations, as one former longtime CIA veteran called it, eschewing
the hard work of recruiting agents and penetrating terrorist
networks. Instead, the new approach was similar to the flashier
paramilitary operations that had worked so well in Afghanistan, and
played well at the White House, where the president was keeping a
scorecard of captured or killed terrorists.
The person most often in the middle of arguments over whether to
dispatch a rendition team was a former Soviet analyst with spiked
hair that matched her in-your-face personality who heads the CTC's
al Qaeda unit, according to a half-dozen CIA veterans who know her.
Her name is being withheld because she is under cover.
She earned a reputation for being aggressive and confident, just the
right quality, some colleagues thought, for a commander in the CIA's
global war on terrorism. Others criticized her for being overzealous
and too quick to order paramilitary action.
The CIA and Guantanamo Bay
One way the CIA has dealt with detainees it no longer wants to hold
is to transfer them to the custody of the U.S. military at
Guantanamo Bay, where defense authorities decide whether to keep or
release them after a review.
About a dozen men have been transferred by the CIA to Guantanamo
Bay, according to a Washington Post review of military tribunal
testimony and other records. Some CIA officials have argued that the
facility has become, as one former senior official put it, "a
dumping ground" for CIA mistakes.
But several former intelligence officials dispute that and defend
the transfer of CIA detainees to military custody. They acknowledged
that some of those sent to Guantanamo Bay are prisoners who, after
interrogation and review, turned out to have less valuable
information than originally suspected. Still, they said, such
prisoners are dangerous and would attack if given the chance.
Among those released from Guantanamo is Mamdouh Habib, an
Egyptian-born Australian citizen, apprehended by a CIA team in
Pakistan in October 2001, then sent to Egypt for interrogation,
according to court papers. He has alleged that he was burned by
cigarettes, given electric shocks and beaten by Egyptian captors.
After six months, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay and let go earlier
this year without being charged.
Another CIA former captive, according to declassified testimony from
military tribunals and other records, is Mohamedou Oulad Slahi, a
Mauritanian and former Canada resident, who says he turned himself
in to the Mauritanian police 18 days after the 9/11 attacks because
he heard the Americans were looking for him. The CIA took him to
Jordan, where he spent eight months undergoing interrogation,
according to his testimony, before being taken to Guantanamo Bay.
Another is Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian imprisoned by
Indonesia authorities in January 2002 after he was heard talking --
he says jokingly -- about a new shoe bomb technology. He was flown
to Egypt for interrogation and returned to CIA hands four months
later, according to one former intelligence official. After being
held for 13 months in Afghanistan, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay,
according to his testimony.
The Masri Case
Khaled Masri came to the attention of Macedonian authorities on New
Year's Eve 2003. Masri, an unemployed father of five living in Ulm,
Germany, said he had gone by bus to Macedonia to blow off steam
after a spat with his wife. He was taken off a bus at the Tabanovce
border crossing by police because his name was similar to that of an
associate of a 9/11 hijacker. The police drove him to Skopje, the
capital, and put him in a motel room with darkened windows, he said
in a recent telephone interview from Germany.
The police treated Masri firmly but cordially, asking about his
passport, which they insisted was forged, about al Qaeda and about
his hometown mosque, he said. When he pressed them to let him go,
they displayed their pistols.
Unbeknown to Masri, the Macedonians had contacted the CIA station in
Skopje. The station chief was on holiday. But the deputy chief, a
junior officer, was excited about the catch and about being able to
contribute to the counterterrorism fight, current and former
intelligence officials familiar with the case said.
"The Skopje station really wanted a scalp because everyone wanted a
part of the game," a CIA officer said. Because the European Division
chief at headquarters was also on vacation, the deputy dealt
directly with the CTC and the head of its al Qaeda unit.
In the first weeks of 2004, an argument arose over whether the CIA
should take Masri from local authorities and remove him from the
country for interrogation, a classic rendition operation.
The director of the al Qaeda unit supported that approach. She
insisted he was probably a terrorist, and should be imprisoned and
interrogated immediately.
Others were doubtful. They wanted to wait to see whether the
passport was proved fraudulent. Beyond that, there was no evidence
Masri was not who he claimed to be -- a German citizen of Arab
descent traveling after a disagreement with his wife.
The unit's director won the argument. She ordered Masri captured and
flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan.
On the 23rd day of his motel captivity, the police videotaped Masri,
then bundled him, handcuffed and blindfolded, into a van and drove
to a closed-off building at the airport, Masri said. There, in
silence, someone cut off his clothes. As they changed his blindfold,
"I saw seven or eight men with black clothing and wearing masks," he
later said in an interview. He said he was drugged to sleep for a
long plane ride.
Afghanistan
Masri said his cell in Afghanistan was cold, dirty and in a cellar,
with no light and one dirty cover for warmth. The first night he
said he was kicked and beaten and warned by an interrogator: "You
are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country
where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will
know."
Masri was guarded during the day by Afghans, he said. At night, men
who sounded as if they spoke American-accented English showed up for
the interrogation. Sometimes a man he believed was a doctor in a
mask came to take photos, draw blood and collect a urine sample.
Back at the CTC, Masri's passport was given to the Office of
Technical Services to analyze. By March, OTS had concluded the
passport was genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.
At the CIA, the question was: Now what? Some officials wanted to go
directly to the German government; others did not. Someone suggested
a reverse rendition: Return Masri to Macedonia and release him.
"There wouldn't be a trace. No airplane tickets. Nothing. No one
would believe him," one former official said. "There would be a bump
in the press, but then it would be over."
Once the mistake reached Tenet, he laid out the options to his
counterparts, including the idea of not telling the Germans.
Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, and Deputy
Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage argued they had to be told, a
position Tenet took, according to one former intelligence official.
"You couldn't have the president lying to the German chancellor"
should the issue come up, a government official involved in the
matter said.
Senior State Department officials decided to approach Interior
Minister Schily, who had been a steadfast Bush supporter even when
differences over the Iraq war strained ties between the two
countries. Ambassador Coats had excellent rapport with Schily.
The CIA argued for minimal disclosure of information. The State
Department insisted on a truthful, complete statement. The two
agencies quibbled over whether it should include an apology,
according to officials.
Meanwhile, Masri was growing desperate. There were rumors that a
prisoner had died under torture. Masri could not answer most
questions put to him. He said he steadied himself by talking with
other prisoners and reading the Koran.
A week before his release in late May 2004, Masri said he was
visited in prison by a German man with a goatee who called himself
Sam. Masri said he asked him if he were from the German government
and whether the government knew he was there. Sam said he could not
answer either question.
"Does my wife at least know I'm here?" Masri asked.
"No, she does not," Sam replied, according to Masri.
Sam told Masri he was going to be released soon but that he would
not receive any documents or papers confirming his ordeal. The
Americans would never admit they had taken him prisoner, Sam added,
according to Masri.
On the day of his release, the prison's director, who Masri believed
was an American, told Masri that he had been held because he "had a
suspicious name," Masri said in an interview.
Several intelligence and diplomatic officials said Macedonia did not
want the CIA to bring Masri back inside the country, so the agency
arranged for him to be flown to Albania. Masri said he was taken to
a narrow country road at dusk. When they let him off, "They asked me
not to look back when I started walking," Masri said. "I was afraid
they would shoot me in the back."
He said he was quickly met by three armed men. They drove all night,
arriving in the morning at Mother Teresa Airport in Tirana. Masri
said he was escorted onto the plane, past all the security
checkpoints, by an Albanian.
Masri has been reunited with his children and wife, who had moved
the family to Lebanon because she did not know where her husband
was. Unemployed and lonely, Masri says neither his German nor Arab
friends dare associate with him because of the publicity.
Meanwhile, a German prosecutor continues to work Masri's case. A
Macedonia bus driver has confirmed that Masri was taken away by
border guards on the date he gave investigators. A forensic analysis
of Masri's hair showed he was malnourished during the period he says
he was in the prison. Flight logs show a plane registered to a CIA
front company flew out of Macedonia on the day Masri says he went to
Afghanistan.
Masri can find few words to explain his ordeal. "I have very bad
feelings" about the United States, he said. "I think it's just like
in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and
less than that, and with no rights and no laws."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this article.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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