Page 114 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

had information gathered from people they had captured or coerced into cooperating. These sources
were people who often spoke with great confidence. Some were highly trusted. Some gave
information that was considered very credible. But Morgan’s point was that if the information they
were sharing had been obtained under stress—if they had just been through some nightmare in Iraq
or Afghanistan or Syria—what they said might be inaccurate or misleading, and the sources
wouldn’t know it. They would say, It’s the doctor! I know it was the doctor, even though the doctor
was a thousand miles away. “I said to the other analysts, ‘You know, the implication of this is really
alarming.’”
So what did Charles Morgan think when he heard what Mitchell and Jessen were up to with
KSM in their faraway black site?
I told people—this was before I was at the CIA, and I told people while I was there—“Trying to
get information out of someone you are sleep-depriving is sort of like trying to get a better signal
out of a radio that you are smashing with a sledgehammer.…It makes no sense to me at all.”

5.

KSM made his first public confession on the afternoon of March 10, 2007, just over four years after
he was captured by the CIA in Islamabad, Pakistan. The occasion was a tribunal hearing held at the
U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There were eight people present in addition to KSM—a
“personal representative” assigned to the prisoner, a linguist, and officers from each of the four
branches of the U.S. military service.
KSM was asked if he understood the nature of the proceedings. He said he did. A description of
the charges against him was read out loud. Through his representative, he made a few small
corrections: “My name is misspelled in the Summary of Evidence. It should be S-h-a-i-k-h or S-h-e-
i-k-h, but not S-h-a-y-k-h, as it is in the subject line.” He asked for a translation of a verse from the
Koran. A few more matters of administration were discussed. Then KSM’s personal representative
read his confession:

I hereby admit and affirm without duress to the following:
I swore Bay’aat [i.e., allegiance] to Sheikh Usama Bin Laden to conduct Jihad…
I was the Operational Director for Sheikh Usama Bin Laden for the organizing, planning,
follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 Operation.…
I was directly in charge, after the death of Sheikh Abu Hafs Al-Masri Subhi Abu Sittah, of
managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as
anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American soil.
Then he listed every single Al Qaeda operation for which he had been, in his words, either “a
responsible participant, principal planner, trainer, financier (via the Military Council Treasury),
executor, and/or a personal participant.” There were thirty-one items in that list: the Sears Tower in
Chicago, Heathrow Airport, Big Ben in London, countless U.S. and Israeli embassies, assassination
attempts on Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II, and on and on, in horrifying detail. Here, for
example, are items 25 to 27:
25. I was responsible for surveillance needed to hit nuclear power plants that generate electricity
in several U.S. states.
26. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing to hit NATO Headquarters in
Europe.
27. I was responsible for the planning and surveying needed to execute the Bojinka Operation,
which was designed to down twelve American airplanes full of passengers. I personally
monitored a round-trip, Manila-to-Seoul, Pan Am flight.
The statement ended. The judge turned to KSM: “Before you proceed, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad,
the statement that was just read by the Personal Representative, were those your words?” KSM said
they were, then launched into a long, impassioned explanation of his actions. He was simply a
warrior, he said, engaged in combat, no different from any other soldier: