Original subtitles

The tragedy of September 11

once again tied the destinies of our two nations.

You came to Afghanistan to defeat terrorism,

and we Afghans welcomed and embraced you

for the liberation of our country.

Together, we ended the rule of terrorism.

The US-led campaign with the Northern Alliance after 9/11

certainly disrupted Osama bin Laden's network.

All the resources of the US government

was directed toward stopping and killing him,

but he was still a potent threat.

The Taliban gravitated towards the Pakistan border,

and they took a vow to regenerate themselves and come back.

Taliban guy said, "We have our own drones and our own cruise missiles,

and those are suicide bombers."

When you're up against an enemy who is willing to explode themselves

and kill you, that's absolutely terrifying.

They're brainwashed.

All they wanna do is die.

These suicide bombers agreed

that they would talk to this Canadian journalist.

And, of course, the journalist was me.

Gary said, "Hey, I got this mission. We're gonna go pick up 29 Taliban

and bring them back to Kabul."

Took a step back. "Is this legit?"

Your worst fear is that these people who you think are your biggest prize

are, in fact, a sort of Trojan horse to get inside your own operation

to kill you.

As soon as the Taliban government had been toppled,

which was much swifter than many in the US government had expected,

38 billion dollars poured in, so there was a lot of reconstruction aid.

In US eyes, the war in Afghanistan was over.

NATO allies and US diplomats, rather than US war fighters,

could, uh, take charge in Afghanistan.

President of the United States and General Franks

and I have been looking at the progress that's being made in this country,

and in cooperation with President Karzai, have concluded that

we're at a point where we clearly have moved

from major combat activity

to a period of... of stability and stabilization and reconstruction.

It was this sense that America was the world's only superpower

and could achieve anything.

They just achieved victory in Afghanistan in two months.

Uh, and, uh, next stop, Baghdad.

At this hour, American and coalition forces

are in the early stages of military operations

to disarm Iraq,

to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.

I think Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda

realized that the US was taking its eye off the ball in Afghanistan

and, um, adjusted its plans accordingly.

Once bin Laden reached relative safety

and he, uh, built sort of a network of couriers and people

who, uh, could transmit his messages,

he was able to, um, start to put al-Qaeda back together again.

After what has happened,

all the important American officials,

headed by the international atheist Bush,

started turning even Muslim countries against us.

They started a war against Islam

in the name of combatting terrorism.

I was a case officer from the CIA serving in Afghanistan.

In 2005-8, the US military presence was still building.

We were trying to develop capabilities to fight Taliban

and to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

We were opening bases and improving on bases

that were in various locations around Afghanistan.

Politically, the government stood up,

and they were trying to reach a normalcy,

and the US was helping the Afghans

try to establish control and governance in Afghanistan.

I would say our efforts to grow in counter-terror operations

and, uh... and search for al-Qaeda was on the increase at that time.

After 9/11, the agency really offered good financial reward

for people to come in and serve as interpreters,

and most of the people that served as linguists were Afghans.

My name is Ghulam Rasul.

I'm originally from Afghanistan, from Panjshir Valley.

Pretty much since I turned 16, I've been fighting.

Back then, the Soviet, and the Taliban today.

I was an independent contractor for CIA.

When you become a translator, also, you're an advisor,

because I was doing ten different things that has nothing to do with a linguist.

They would advise me on, like, tribal code, and how, you know,

the background of a person and where that person was from

that, for me as a case officer,

informed me and helped me do my job better.

In September 2006,

I had an opportunity to interview an Afghan

who I was looking at for a... as a potential source.

We left the embassy compound,

and we went to a nearby intersection at a traffic circle called Massoud Circle.

And there, I was on the street corner,

waiting for this guy to show up.

As a Westerner, I look different and stand out.

And there are people that would try to kill you.

I'm scanning back and forth,

looking for potential threats.

At one point during my scan,

I noticed, just off to my left,

a black Toyota car sitting there.

I noticed there were two guys in it. They were looking at me.

We were talking, and, uh... Gary,

says, "What? Why is this car parked over here?"

"That's not the place to park."

It's the Ministry of Health, US Embassy, the security is so tight.

I told him, I said, "It's Afghanistan. They don't care about where they park."

I accepted it.

Well, then the guy showed up, so Rasul and I turned

and went back through the, uh, security checkpoint with the guy,

and walked about 150, 200 meters back to the embassy gate.

And it was a couple of minutes later, or less than that, it went off.

There was a deafening explosion.

You could feel the concussion in the air.

And then, all the alarms went off.

Anything within probably 150, 200 meters was just devastated.

If we were there two more minute...

we would be bloody.

It was big, and there was...

over 35 casualties and a lot of people wounded.

I went to the embassy security and asked,

"Hey, was that a suicide car bombing?"

And they said, "Yes, they hit a military convoy at that circle."

I said, "Was it a black Toyota Corolla?" And they were shocked.

Said, "How could you know that?"

So, the Taliban, the word "Talib" comes from, uh, the word for student.

They originally came from the madrasas, religious schools of Pakistan.

And the Taliban movement really, um, emerged from the ashes

of the Afghan Civil War, which followed the, uh, end of the Soviet occupation.

And there was this sense amongst many Afghan people

that, um, the brutality of the civil war,

the corruption of the warlords

who seemed intent on lining their own pockets

and sort of abusing the people,

um, that gave the Taliban a foothold,

because they offered a sort of pure, ascetic version, uh, of Islam.

Of course, this was a sort of seventh-century version of Islam,

where women had to be covered, uh, from head to toe,

uh, they were subjugated, um, to their husbands

who often had up to three wives.

Um, there were, you know, medieval-type punishments,

stonings to death and chopping the hands off... off thieves.

So, it was a pretty brutal interpretation of Islam.

The Taliban, they were perfectly prepared to die in... in... in battle,

but, uh, didn't, uh, necessarily want to commit suicide.

But, um, once you had, um, a full-blown insurgency in Iraq,

um, with IEDs and, uh, suicide bombers being used,

they could see how potent a weapon it was.

During the years 2005 through 2008,

IEDs were growing in their use,

because that was the weapon the Taliban chose.

An IED is simply a remotely-detonated bomb planted alongside a roadway.

Then, the suicide vests,

which are either detonated by the wearer,

or sometimes, there is a triggering device

that could detonate it remotely.

And then, you have the vehicle-borne, uh, IEDs,

which, you know, you can take compartments in a vehicle,

and just pack it with explosives.

The VBIED in the black Toyota, at the time,

was the biggest to that date that had been used in Afghanistan.

I think it was, uh... it was well over 200 pounds of explosives.

Back then, we had at least once a week,

car bomb, or suicide attack, or something.

And it get worse by...

You know, every year, it got worse, worse.

You know, interestingly,

it's all in this strict form of, uh, Wahhabi Islam,

but suicide bombers, once they get trained and are ready to go do their mission,

are given cash, which for them is a lot,

uh, and they're told, "Hey, go out. It's okay if you drink now."

"It's okay if you pay for a woman now,

because you're gonna die, ending in heaven,

but you'll be forgiven now because you're gonna do that."

So basically, "Here's some money. Go live it up, and then go do your job."

And, uh, I found that...

quite, you know, interesting, uh, to say the least.

Some of these suicide bomber,

usually 17, 18, 19, something like that.

One of the kid...

I personally... I asked him, "Do you have parents?"

He said no.

He was seven years old.

He was... picked up,

and just like him, hundreds, hundreds of children been...

They steal these children. They take them to the training camp.

For three and a half years, they're brainwashed.

They put them in a madrasa, and separate.

The teachers, they look for the talent,

how easy they can manipulate them.

They become zombie.

All they wanna do is die.

They want to kill. It doesn't matter. They just wanna blow themselves up.

During the fight against the Soviets,

refugee camps were stood up in Pakistan,

so it was easy for Taliban

to go there to recruit people.

You have these suicide bombers crossing the border from Pakistan,

suicide vests being produced,

IEDs being produced and-and transported.

And so, that's a real breeding ground for the Taliban,

but you also have, uh, in terms of the United States,

when people have nothing, if you can offer them a new life,

you can offer them money, you can offer them a way out.

That... That also gives you some leverage.

I thought that perhaps we could work an... an angle,

um, using these Taliban to interdict IEDs.

So, extremely important for the CIA

to, uh, get alongside the Afghan government,

and also the NDS, the Afghan intelligence service.

They always realized that the intricacies

of the ethnic and tribal, uh, patchwork that made up Afghanistan

was something that they could never understand fully.

In late 2005, the Afghanistan Chief of Station

introduced me to General Wardak.

He was the Minister of Defense for Afghanistan.

The purpose of my introduction to him

was to look at ways that the Afghan army

could cooperate with the CIA

to try to help us, um, mount operations against Taliban or al-Qaeda.

At one point, General Wardak introduced me to General Fahim,

who in the 1980s fought with, uh, Jalaluddin Haqqani,

who was one of the key members of the Taliban.

General Wardak said if I needed anyone to do anything or go with me,

it would be General Fahim.

General Fahim eventually made contact

with a Taliban mullah named Haimi.

He was a mid-level commander in the Taliban.

And he wasn't a fighter. He was a religious guy.

But one of the things he did was, um, send suicide bombers

and IED components into Afghanistan.

What appealed to the Taliban member

was that, at that time, the US presence was still growing.

I sort of offered a deal that if you will cooperate with me

and put down your arms, A, you're not gonna get killed,

and B, you know, I'll find ways to work with you

that will be mutually beneficial.

And... that's understood to mean, "Okay, I might get some money out of this."

We eventually came on a plan to try to get a group of Taliban

to come across the border, uh, illegally,

but meet with me,

and then we would promise not to arrest them or kill them,

and then we would look and see if there were ways we could work together.

To bring 29, uh, Taliban members across the border from Pakistan

into Afghanistan is... is quite an undertaking.

So, you don't wanna be detected by, uh, the Pakistanis,

you don't want, uh, Taliban to know that Americans are involved in this,

and, uh, you're operating on Afghan territory.

The people back at headquarters in Washington said, "Wait a second."

"Uh, we're bringing in twenty-something Taliban,

and we're liable if these guys turn out to be... do an attack,

or overpower or kill somebody."

"We brought 'em in, so that's gonna be bad for the CIA."

The CIA has a group of former military.

We call it GRS, stands for Global Response Security,

and those are the CIA's bodyguards.

One of the GRS guys, who I had known from Iraq and before,

was call sign "Brutus."

I always looked at us as a support element to case officers

that were out trying to collect their intel and do their job.

Um, so, we would try to support them the best we can while keeping them safe.

So, kind of think of it as a Secret Service detail on steroids.

Gary came into my room, think we had beers,

and he said, "Hey, I got this mission. Um, do you guys wanna support it?"

And I said, "Okay, what is it?"

He says, "We're gonna go pick up 29 Taliban

and bring them back to Kabul, to a safe house."

And I was like, "Gary, is this sanctioned by headquarters,

or is this just, like, you're thinking out loud right now?"

He's like, "No, it's gonna happen. I wanna know if you can support it."

Gotta step back and say, "Is this the best decision?"

Is that juice worth the squeeze, as they like to say here in Texas,

or are we getting too far out of the spectrum here

that we're doing something silly?

And so, one of the things, um, on the minds of CIA officers all the time

is the potential for what could go wrong.

And one of the things that was foremost in the minds of all CIA officers

was the fate of Mike Spann at Qala-i-Jangi on November 25, 2001.

Team Alpha was eight CIA officers. They were the second team in Afghanistan.

They essentially split up.

Mike Spann and David Tyson went to Qala-i-Jangi,

which was, uh, a fortress, uh, just outside Mazar-i-Sharif,

to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners.

He's a terrorist?

Yes. He's a terrorist.

- These men are terrorists? - I believe.

All these men are terrorists. I think you're a terrorist.

You come here to Afghanistan to kill people.

I don't... I...

Okay, you wanna talk to him?

One of the things that, uh, David Tyson and Mike Spann had not realized

uh, was that these al-Qaeda prisoners had not been properly searched.

Where are you from?

- I'm from Pakistan. - Pakistan?

- Why did you come to Afghanistan? - I come from Jihad.

- Against whom? - Against the terrorism of USA.

But now, you're prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Yeah. It's no problem. All is fair in love and war.

And what had happened was these al-Qaeda fighters

had come up firing weapons, exploding grenades, uh, killing guards...

...forcing them to flee,

and within, really, 30 seconds or so,

uh, the sort of power dynamic inside Qala-i-Jangi had shifted,

and al-Qaeda, uh, these fighters, were in control.

And so, Mike was soon, um, basically having to fight people off with his hands.

Then he disappeared under a pile of bodies.

And David then, he really, by his own account, has no option.

He has to kill or be killed,

and that's what he does.

He survived and Mike Spann didn't,

and, uh, that was just the way events unfolded that day.

Always in back of the mind of any CIA officer

is a sort of Qala-i-Jangi situation.

For an operation like this, where you, as a case officer,

are focusing on the mechanics

of trying to persuade someone to come over to your side,

you don't wanna be thinking excessively about the security situation.

And so, Ground Branch officers, CIA paramilitary, uh, officers,

are the people who specialize in that all the time.

And just like Navy SEALs or... or... or Delta Force,

they can get a job done with sort of maximum killing efficiency,

very, very quickly, and they can get people out as well.

So, there were five or six of them, and we went to the border.

The legal crossing point is called the Torkham Gate,

and the illegal crossing was in a wadi close by.

And there were a lot of smugglers and people that crossed illegally there.

I think officials kind of turned a blind eye to it.

The Taliban, we'd instructed them to come across one at a time.

That sort of protected us from that...

a group of 'em if they were trying to swarm on us.

The main concern, at that point,

was that any of these guys could be wearing a suicide vest.

I knew the hug that you give and the cheek brushing that you do

in a traditional tribal greeting.

I was able to go up to each one with General Fahim

and hug each guy and rub face.

But when I do that, you know, of course, I've got my hands on their sides and back,

and I'm gonna feel if they have a weapon or a suicide vest on.

Somebody like Gary is gonna spot if there might be a weapon hidden,

if somebody's sweating, if somebody's nervous.

So, that sort of eyeball-to-eyeball contact, uh,

you know, sort of a gut check from, uh, an experienced CIA case officer,

uh, is something that takes a lot of bravery

because, if it does go wrong, you could be who's killed.

They were being controlled by Haimi.

He did come across, but he waited until he sent enough of the others,

I think, to probably gauge that we were not arresting them or... or hurting them.

And then, he crossed.

The plan was that, A, we had to be ready to protect the Afghans,

but, B, we had to be ready to kill them if they all decide to try to do an attack.

And we started moving to... up this long, torturous road to Kabul.

As they left the border, those Taliban men knew that now,

they were in the protection of us, so their lives were at risk.

And I'm sure they were probably equally as scared as we were scared.

The trip by road from Jalalabad to Kabul,

it's fairly long, and there's some really steep cliffs

with no guardrail around curves.

It's... It's a really, uh, scary drive at any time,

and particularly now, we have 29 Taliban.

Prior to us leaving,

one of the things that I had asked, uh, the station to do

was to get us a safe house in Kabul.

I found out there was no safe house,

so I called the Minister of Defense, General Wardak, on the phone.

He started cursing at me and yelling. He said,

"You want me, in 24 hours, to find a house in Kabul

to put 29 of my country's enemies in in secret, and you want it done now?"

But, hey, he's the Minister of Defense,

so he came up somehow with a house that had a basement,

where we could rent this house for a little bit

and put these people in the basement.

The safe house that the general was able to get

was a two-story building that had a basement.

And again, we moved in at night, so you had a little cover from night,

but it was in a big, sort of a well-to-do neighborhood for Kabul.

And, to be honest, there's nothing you can do in a location like that

that can be secret very long.

Brutus was one of the GRS guys that came to the safe house

to provide security for the CIA case officers coming there.

From a security aspect, it was not a great house.

It was just... every house above us was taller than us. Um...

We were exposed coming in and out, and only got worse from there.

Once we got inside, it was like,

"Oh my God, this is a horrible, horrible house."

We basically had a basement area that had one way in, one way out,

and it was just a security nightmare, uh, for that.

And I said, "Hey, if we do any interviews, gotta be by the bottom of the stairs."

One of the things that, uh, he told me, for emergency planning,

"Hey, if, uh... if these guys start trying to overcome us,

don't get trapped in this back corner,

because it'd be hard for us to get you out of that corner."

It's getting that lone person separated from the crowd. You know?

The wolves are gonna attack that lone deer, sheep, whatever it is

that gets out and makes themselves vulnerable.

It doesn't take long. We were getting stink eye from these guys.

They did not look like they were happy to be home,

and, uh, so it was definitely cause for concern.

It was a nervous time. Of course, they were probably wondering,

"Is this it? This where they're gonna kill us?"

One of the Taliban was in misery. I knew he had a headache or something.

Come to find out through the interpreter, they said he has a toothache.

So, I got some basic Motrin, Tylenol, and then came down and was like,

"Hey, brother, this will make you feel better."

Older guys were like, "No, we're not taking any of your Western medicine."

I even took two. I was like, "See? No big deal."

And he took it, and the next day, he actually gave me a smile

and said, "We're cool."

When that group of Taliban saw that here's an American who's giving aid

and helping this guy feel good, then I think that's when,

"Okay. Hey, we're not gonna get killed,

and that you can trust these guys."

At this point, you've done a lot of the hard work.

Uh, you've got the 29 from Pakistan into, uh, Afghanistan.

Uh, it doesn't seem to be a trap so far,

and now you need to assess whether they can be turned,

whether they can work, uh, for you,

and whether they could be the key

to, uh, unlocking the IED suicide bomber network

and, uh, be an asset that could save American and Afghan lives.

We settled the Taliban in, and then, over the next 48 hours,

started screening them.

We leaned on both, uh... some linguists, interpreters from the CIA,

but also, uh, General Fahim,

who took a very, uh, detailed part in helping us question

and work through each one to see

what kind of information and activities does this guy have access to.

And then, if he's worthwhile,

maybe he's connected to an IED cell.

Maybe he, uh, knows where, uh, hidden explosives are.

Maybe he has connection to a more senior Taliban,

or maybe even an al-Qaeda person.

So, that's what you're gonna screen them for.

Gary probably realized that,

"Hey, a lot of these guys are very low level." Um...

"We could start thinning this herd

and concentrate on the key people we really wanna talk to."

Of this group of 29, uh, Taliban,

we wound up finding six that we felt we could trust.

I ended up sending the rest back to Pakistan,

to refugee camps or whatever, with a small sum of money

and a "promise" that they would not take up arms

against the US or Afghanistan.

Plus, I had enough damning info on them that, you know,

that I could make their lives miserable by saying,

"Hey, well, you met with an American."

We have a photograph of a group of those, uh, Taliban

and some of the agency guys there with them.

The risk that they took was,

if they were ever discovered cooperating with the US,

certainly with a Taliban person that they viewed as a traitor,

you... they would cut your head off.

I kept about, uh, five other of those Taliban inside Kabul,

and I used them like they were a Taliban cell.

I focused more of my effort on Haimi, who was the leader of the group.

He was more educated than the rest.

He was used to being in charge.

To be honest, he was an arrogant little son of a bitch.

I sent him back to Pakistan to resume his place,

but to cooperate with us secretly.

At one point, speaking with Haimi,

he tipped us off that his Taliban seniors

had instructed him to send a bus into Afghanistan

that had the components for all the explosives,

detonators, um, triggering devices.

We were able to interdict that bus and then discovered, you know,

essentially all the components that would supply an IED factory.

Haimi tipped Fahim off

that, um, he'd been instructed to send two suicide bombers

to Kabul to conduct their suicide operation.

Was trying to figure, how can I meet these suicide bombers?

I came up with a story for Fahim to tell them

that he knew a Canadian journalist friendly to the Taliban cause.

And that journalist would interview them, but after they'd martyred themselves,

he would write stories and tell the world about them

and their sacrifice, and make them famous.

So, eventually, these two guys agreed

that they would, you know, talk to this Canadian journalist.

And, of course, the journalist was me.

You're trying to build trust. You're trying to present yourself

as somebody that is honest and genuine,

but you're pretending to be a different person. Um...

But once you sort of get into the zone of a role

and you're very focused, you almost sort of, I think, believe it yourself,

that you are that Canadian journalist

who's trying to get the story from the Taliban suicide bomber.

Over the course of speaking with the suicide bombers

is when I started learning about their situation

and learning about them individually.

The only thing they could do

that would bring any value to their life at all

was kill themselves, and then they'd be rewarded in heaven,

and that their family would be compensated somewhat.

We wanted the Afghan intel service to get that on film

so they could use that in sort of a, um, public affairs campaign

to try to show the Taliban in a bad light,

uh, for taking innocent people from villages and brainwashing them

and turning them into these suicide bombers.

My family knows I am here, but they can't stop me.

I am here to commit suicide on America.

But each individual person, as they get closer to the point of which,

you know, certain death,

they must sorta question it. They must wonder about it.

If you can get to talk to them and try and sort of assess

what their motivation is, it could be huge.

They could tell you, um, information about the network,

uh, who sent them there, uh, what the route was that they took in.

So, very, very valuable potential source.

Afghanistan has cold weather.

I was wearing local clothing and an afghan blanket wrapped around me.

Because the younger was cold and shaking as he is talking to me,

I had taken the blanket off me and put it around him,

and told him, you know... you know, to make himself comfortable.

As I got ready to leave, he started to take that off

and give it back to me, and I said, "No, it's yours. You keep it."

They told me later that, after I left,

those... the two suicide bombers said,

"Wow, we've never met a Westerner before, and we thought they were all evil,

but that guy seemed nice."

"He seemed normal. He seemed to care."

And they said, "Good thing he was Canadian and not American."

And, as a result of that,

over the course of two or three more meetings,

you know, I showed them compassion, started talking to 'em about their lives,

and what it would take for them to have a meaningful life,

um, if they ever went back.

'Cause, by that point, the questions I'm asking them

about their training and indoctrination and recruitment as suicide bombers,

I'm not really sounding as much like a journalist,

and... and I felt I'd established enough, uh, credibility with them

that I could... you know, come clean.

I eventually told them,

"Hey, I'm an American, and I'm CIA."

I offered them probably...

ended up being several hundred dollars,

probably no more than 650.

It would be enough for them to get a start

and not have to return to be a suicide bomber.

Not only did it save the suicide bombers from dying,

but... it saved how... we don't know how many victims.

And that, in the end, that was, to me, was the ultimate goal.

By all accounts, Gary Harrington's actions were,

you know, almost the ultimate actions of a CIA officer.

You're in the middle of a war. Uh...

You're potentially saving American lives.

You're working with Afghan allies.

You're trying to do your bit to make a difference.

And really, um, you can't ask a CIA officer to do more than that.

And I've always been sort of... yeah, maybe,

as I found out later, considered in the CIA, a rule breaker,

but, uh, you know, that I broke 'em not for personal gain, but for, um...

to accomplish a mission.

I stood at the top of the Tora Bora mountains in 2001,

when everything was going our way

and, you know, al-Qaeda was on the run, Taliban were on the run.

Um, everybody was so happy.

It seemed like such a victory after going through 9/11.

And, you know, I told the guys around me that,

"Hey, it's like king of the hill."

"But staying king of the hill and not being toppled

is gonna be difficult."

So, I knew that, ultimately, a withdrawal...

was gonna have to happen.

But, you know, I feel really strongly that the way it was done,

and not leaving a US presence there,

or not ensuring that the people who I trusted my life to,

who protected my life, that we haven't protected theirs.

That... That hurts.

I've been in contact with, uh, Rasul.

He is a part of the resistance.

He left his job with the CIA and returned to Afghanistan.

Now, he is working with Massoud,

the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud,

who was the original Panjshiri iconic leader before 9/11,

and trying to help him become established

as the main resistance leader.

I'm obligated.

I have to do this.

I have to be with the resistance. I have to fight these people.

Encourage people. I mean, I'm getting old, but the thing is,

Pakistan will make Afghanistan

number one terrorist state in the world.

And this is gonna happen if we don't resist.

So, dark days in Afghanistan now,

and there's a sense of, "What was it all for?"

I don't think this is end of the story.

Taliban, uh, hasn't succeeded in governing Afghanistan properly.

And, uh, I think there's another chapter to come.