On Ground in Iraq,
Soldier Uses Wits
To Hunt Insurgents
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 10, 2004; Page A1
KHALIDIYA, Iraq -- The Army trained Sgt. John McCary, an intelligence soldier, to interrogate prisoners of war in secure military facilities far from the front lines.
But on a recent day, his best hope for getting information was an Iraqi boy, sobbing at the sight of heavily armed Americans in his home.
Sgt. McCary and a team of soldiers had pushed their way into the cramped house, in search of four suspected insurgents. Once inside, they discovered the men had fled, leaving behind a group of shrieking women in black abayas and children in dirty sweatpants.
"We're not going to get s---," Sgt. McCary said. "These women know they can't be detained so there is no reason for them to cooperate." The battalion's general practice is to interrogate the oldest male in a family -- in this case, the crying boy, who looked about 8 years old.
As gunfire sounded in the distance, Sgt. McCary, 28 years old, had to make a split-second decision whether to pull the child off to a corner and try to get him to tell the whereabouts of the insurgents.
Intelligence soldiers like Sgt. McCary are assigned to gather information about the enemy and its plan of attack. In conventional warfare, they study satellite photos of enemy troop movements, intercept radio transmissions and interrogate captured soldiers.
But the shadowy enemy that the U.S. is unexpectedly battling in Iraq requires a far different approach. So Sgt. McCary, who speaks fluent Arabic and specializes in "human intelligence," improvises how he does his job and the Army is improvising how it uses soldiers like him.
Sgt. McCary's experience in Iraq shows why this war is so hard to win. It also highlights why the U.S. Army, a force built for wars against uniformed enemies with tanks and planes, is still struggling to adapt 18 months into its fight with a brutal insurgency that hides among the local population.
Looking to cut costs, the Army slashed its active-duty counterintelligence and human-intelligence force, critical to battling guerrilla fighters, by about one-third in the 1990s. Frontline commanders rarely trained with these troops.
Today senior Army officials in the Pentagon say they are adding 4,000 more intelligence specialists to the current force of 6,000, to meet demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But because counterintelligence and human-intelligence soldiers require extra training, including as much as 15 months of foreign-language school, adding them will take years.
To preserve their anonymity, counterintelligence soldiers don't wear nametags or ranks on their uniforms. Because he is leaving Iraq this month, after finishing his one-year tour, Sgt. McCary and his commanders recently allowed a reporter to follow him for several days.
Sgt. McCary graduated from Vassar College with a degree in French literature before enlisting in the Army in 2000. Before basic training he had never touched a gun in his life. Because he had a college degree and a knack for languages, the Army sent him to its Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., for Arabic instruction. He picked up the language so quickly that his instructors nicknamed him "the sponge."
Last fall, he was sent to Khalidiya, an insurgent stronghold near Fallujah. On the way to his battalion's base, his unit was hit with mortar and rocket-propelled-grenade fire.
"I jump out of my seat every time I hear a whump, crack or thump," he wrote in an e-mail home to his parents in North Carolina on Sept. 28, 2003. But the attacks didn't dim his initial optimism. The Iraqis "are a good-hearted people, steeped in traditions different from ours but not inhuman, incomprehensible or impenetrable," his e-mail said.
At first, Sgt. McCary's biggest challenge was showing his 800-man battalion, built to fight rows of opposing tanks, how to use him. Army doctrine states that human-intelligence soldiers are supposed to stay behind the front lines -- not accompany troops on dangerous raids.
That approach didn't work in Iraq. The tank commanders, unable to speak Arabic and unfamiliar with the culture, would often round up everyone in a house they were raiding and bring them in to be interrogated.
Soon the battalion's detention facility was bursting with more than 200 detainees, most of whom had no useful information. Sgt. McCary and his fellow human-intelligence soldiers were working 18-hour days to question them all. "If we could have done preliminary questioning in the field, the majority of the guys we were detaining would never have been brought in," Sgt. McCary says.
By October, Sgt. McCary and a colleague persuaded his bosses to try a different approach. Instead of sitting on the base, Sgt. McCary would go out on raids. "I want to be as close as I can to the hit team without being shot," he says.
In the last year, the sergeant has conducted more than 1,000 interrogations of Iraqi insurgents, trying to figure out how they are organized and where they are hiding. He's walked hundreds of patrols, dodged rocket-propelled-grenade fire and watched friends -- both Iraqi and American -- die grisly deaths. So far, 19 soldiers and three Iraqi translators in his battalion have been killed.
His presence on raids helped in efforts to bring in only Iraqis who had actual knowledge about the insurgency. It also had another benefit. Interrogating detainees in the first few minutes after capture allowed him to question suspects while they are disoriented and unable to construct a good alibi. He says his battalion is the only one he knows of that uses counterintelligence soldiers in this way. "I didn't realize how innovative we were until I started talking with friends from other units," he says.
Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman in the Pentagon, says it isn't unheard of for counterintelligence soldiers to accompany troops on raids. "But we don't have enough of these assets to use them in this war on a regular basis," he says.
Learning to Lie
In the field, Sgt. McCary learned other critical skills. One was the ability to lie. "If you are not a Muslim brother in this culture you are nothing, so I had to construct an entirely new working persona," he says. Though he has no Arab heritage, he tells Iraqis his mother is Lebanese. He sprinkles every conversation with asides such as "Praise be to God." When a local says he is afraid to talk because the mujahedeen will kill him, Sgt. McCary recites a phrase commonly used in Iraq: "A good Muslim fears only one person." Then the sergeant points to the sky. As part of the ritual, the other person says, "Allah."
Last month, Sgt. McCary and 30 other soldiers set out to find an insurgent who they believe heads a terrorist cell that has been attacking them. The battalion raided the insurgent's house five months ago and found bomb-making equipment and grenade launchers, but not the insurgent. Recently they got a tip that a local government minister was harboring the cell leader at his home.
But just getting basic information -- such as the exact location of the minister's house -- is difficult. There are no street signs in most Iraqi cities. Many homes look alike and none of them have numbers. Operating under conventional rules of warfare, the Army doesn't allow Sgt. McCary to don local clothes or ride in civilian vehicles. He must wear his uniform when he goes into town. So Sgt. McCary couldn't disguise himself and have the tipster discreetly lead him to the house.
He also couldn't tell locals why he was looking for the minister's house. In the last few months, insurgents in the area have killed or attempted to kill anyone seen cooperating with U.S. troops.
Sgt. McCary's source told him generally where the minister lived. The insurgent they were looking for drove a green car, which the source said should be parked by the house. To confirm he had the right house, Sgt. McCary pretended to be an Army civil-affairs officer, doing a survey of the local infrastructure. The ruse would give him a good excuse to inquire about the minister's house.
"It is extremely duplicitous, but if you walk up to people and say, 'Damn it, we want to know where this bad guy lives; we want to help you,' it is not effective," he says.
Sgt. McCary and his fellow soldiers packed themselves tightly into a small, armored troop carrier. "I hope you put on deodorant today," he joked to the soldier next to him.
"No, but I changed my underwear this morning,"' the young soldier replied.
"Just for me, or just in case?" Sgt. McCary deadpanned.
Once in the neighborhood, a hive of brown, two-story houses surrounded by mud walls, Sgt. McCary talked to the locals. A man in a white dish-dasha, a long dress-like shirt, complained his family was getting only four hours of electricity a day. Another local in a Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt told him U.S. troops were shooting in their neighborhood at night.
Sgt. McCary spotted a boy of about 11, standing lookout in front of what he thought might be the minister's house. He wanted to get a picture of the boy for his records. But the boy was adamant he didn't want his photograph taken by the Americans.
"Don't be such a girl," Sgt. McCary teased the boy, telling him they were just in town taking a survey of the local power and water facilities. Another counterintelligence soldier crouched down next to the boy, pretending he was posing for a souvenir snapshot to send back home.
"Wow, we are definitely going to hell," Sgt. McCary said in English, as he snapped the picture.
In 30 more minutes of questioning, Sgt. McCary duped two locals into telling him where the minister actually lived -- by first asking about the local garbage, electricity and other municipal services.
When they identified the minister's house, the tank platoon accompanying him prepared to raid it. But Sgt. McCary told them to hold off. The green car -- which was supposed to belong to the insurgent -- wasn't parked outside. They would have to try another time.
"When you are a [tank] commander, the mindset is, there's a bad guy, let's kick his a--. That doesn't work here. This is like police work," Sgt. McCary says.
The day was humbling in another way. The insurgent's hideout was only about 100 yards from where U.S. forces had targeted him five months earlier. The reluctance of locals to tell U.S. troops where insurgents hide is frustrating, Sgt. McCary says, allowing the enemy to move easily. "We are so removed from Khalidiya these bad guys know they can thumb their noses at us."
Despite the setbacks, a year in Iraq has made Sgt. McCary and his battalion a smarter, tougher, more cynical fighting force. The same tank commanders who had never worked with a counterintelligence soldier before now go out of their way to request his presence on raids and patrols. Sgt. McCary's battalion commander nominated him recently for the Bronze Star.
"You couldn't design a better counter-insurgent," says Maj. John Nagl, who is third in command of Sgt. McCary's battalion. "He's interested in other cultures, willing to question his own beliefs and mores."
The next day, Sgt. McCary and a team of soldiers set out on the mission to find four insurgents suspected of launching attacks on U.S. forces. Two of the four men he was looking for are members of the local U.S.-trained Iraqi National Guard security force. Sgt. McCary knew he didn't have enough information to detain the men. But his command was hoping that by questioning them he could put a scare into them and elicit some intelligence.
On a blistering morning, the soldiers pushed through the gate of the suspects' house, finding nothing but shrieking women and small children milling about in a dirt courtyard outside. In the corner was a freshly washed black motorcycle, still coated in suds. Sgt. McCary took the bike's presence as a sign that one of the men they were looking for had been in the house recently but fled.
He quickly began firing questions at the women in Arabic. "Whose motorcycle is this?" he asked.
"It's broken," a woman replied.
He repeated the question. This time the same woman told him she found it on the street.
Interrogating women rarely produces good intelligence, Sgt. McCary says. Arresting women in this male-dominated society is deeply offensive to most Iraqis, so U.S. troops avoid it at all costs. Because the women know they are unlikely to be detained, they have little incentive to cooperate.
The battalion's unwritten policy is to interrogate the oldest male on the scene. In this case it was the sobbing boy. Sgt. McCary grabbed the child by the wrist and led him into the dark house off the courtyard. When his mother tried to follow, Sgt. McCary yelled at her to stay away.
Outside the mother began crying, in English, "Mister. Baby. Mister. Baby."
Rapid-Fire Questions
Inside the house, Sgt. McCary fired questions at the terrified boy. Once the boy realized Sgt. McCary wasn't going to hurt him, he told different stories; that he didn't know any of the men they were looking for, or that the men had all moved away. So Sgt. McCary took off his helmet, leaned in close and began to yell in an effort to unsettle him.
Using a photo that he pulled off the wall, Sgt. McCary got the boy to identify the men he was looking for. He scribbled a name over each face.
Then the sergeant took the picture next door, hoping to get the names confirmed with a second source. The place had no roof or furniture. The floor was covered with dirt and the morning's breakfast. Sgt. McCary led the oldest male present, a boy of about 6 years old, aside and showed him the picture.
A few minutes later, the soldiers heard a loud thud. It was the first of four roadside bombs that would explode in Khalidiya that day. Soldiers crouched behind walls for protection. The second boy and his mother confirmed the names Sgt. McCary got at the first house.
Sgt. McCary and the rest of the platoon piled back into the Humvees. The mission was a success of sorts. Sgt. McCary now knew what the suspected insurgents looked like. But it was exhausting. "The fact that I have to terrify a kid ... to get the truth is b—s---," he said. "Morally it is questionable. But you've got to go with what you've got."
A small percentage of the insurgents who launch attacks against U.S. forces in Khalidiya are foreign fighters from places such as Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Some of the terrorists come from nearby Fallujah, which isn't currently under U.S. control and has become something of an insurgent safe haven. But many of the insurgents in Khalidiya seem to be locals, Sgt. McCary and his commanders say, drawn to attack the U.S. by a combination of nationalism and religious obligation.
In May, a good friend of Sgt. McCary's had his leg blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade. U.S. forces quickly grabbed the insurgent who fired it. Back at the base, Sgt. McCary asked the enemy fighter if he was a mujahedeen, or holy warrior.
The man shook his head no. "Then why did you blow off my friend's leg?" Sgt. McCary recalls asking.
The insurgent, a small man in his 20s, said he did it because he was told to by his religious leader.
Above his bunk, Sgt. McCary keeps photographs of two friends, an Iraqi father and son who worked as translators for the Army in Khalidiyah until insurgents kidnapped them in broad daylight from their home of 40 years. The mujahedeen murdered the 75-year-old father and beat the son unconscious.
Shortly after the kidnapping, Sgt. McCary e-mailed his family back home in North Carolina. "This is such a barbaric place. I cannot fathom the depths the Iraqis endured to reach this level," he wrote.
In the e-mail he added that he wished those responsible for the killings, maimings and kidnappings would simply "dissipate.... I wish they would transform into average citizens, fathers, sons and brothers. I don't care about bloodlust, justice or revenge," he wrote.
Sgt. McCary and his commanders know that won't happen. They say the key to defeating this or any insurgency is convincing locals to tell them where the enemy hides. "But the natural inclination of the Iraqis is to support their own people," he says.
He remains hopeful that more Iraqis will eventually help the U.S. track down the enemy. "I just don't see how they could remain loyal to the insurgency, but it is possible. In this culture, Allah trumps all. Religious loyalties can never be questioned," he says.
Does he think he and his fellow soldiers are winning the war in Khalidiya? "I've learned a lot. I have been extremely successful. I couldn't have asked for a better command," he says.
"Am I winning? I don't know. I am just fighting."
