The Interrogator’s War, Inside the secret war against al Qaeda
The Interrogator’s War, Inside the secret war against al Qaeda, Chris Mackey with Greg Miller, John Murray
review by Nicky Hager.
It would be easy to be sceptical about a US Army-cleared book, written by a US military interrogator, when it tries to explain and justify prisoner interrogation during the 2001-2 Afghanistan war. However, although the author uncritically supports the war, his account of working in the main US military interrogation facilities in Afghanistan seems honest and believable.
The setting is as bleak and inhuman as you might imagine. He spent five months at a facility at Kandahar airport (nicknamed “The Abattoir”), where lines of hooded prisoners arrived at night on planes bound together with chains. Later he was in charge of interrogation in the “much more depressing environment” of Bagram airbase, where chained detainees in orange overalls were kept in large steel cages: “In every sense of the word, a dungeon.”
The 480-page book contains numerous stories of how the interrogations were conducted and the prisoners they faced. The title says “inside the secret war against al Qaeda”, but actually the book illustrates the breadth and murkiness of the US War on Terror. Most prisoners were not al Qaeda. All sorts were being rounded up in Afghanistan – every Arab found, Taleban leaders, uncooperative warlords’ followers and a lot of ordinary farmers – but also prisoners flown in from little publicised US operations in countries like Indonesia and Pakistan. Many had no sympathy for al Qaeda, for instance Chechens dedicated to their homeland. Many were later sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Unexpectedly, the book includes some interesting snippets about what New Zealand’s military was doing in Afghanistan, a subject our government continues to keep secret. Mackey (not his real name) describes visiting the Kiwi SAS camp at Kandahar airport, “a cluster of tents … near the airport mosque”. Together with special forces from the US, Australia, Denmark, Norway and Germany, our SAS soldiers went on repeated raids across Afghanistan, bringing back prisoners to the interrogation sites. The book describes the slaughter of hundreds of Afghan and Arab fighters that was the Anaconda battle, in which our SAS participated. No prisoners were brought back from that mission.
He describes the intelligence area at Bagram airbase, a plywood building erected inside an enormous old Soviet hangar. This is where New Zealand military intelligence officers are still based today assisting the US operations. The interrogators, who didn’t hide their strong dislike for the CIA and other intelligence officers, called this place the “Puzzled Palace”, a play on the National Security Agency HQ’s Puzzle Palace nickname.
Mackey is not confortable about lots that his side has done, especially in Iraq. He concludes the book saying: “The reason the US should not torture prisoners is not because it doesn’t work. It is simply because it is wrong. It dehumanises us, undermines our cause, and, over the long term, breeds more enemies of the United States than coercive interrogation methods will ever allow us to capture.”