Continued from Part I

If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.

This is the transcript of Mike Levine and Mark Marshall in New York interviewing Jack Idema in Pulacharke prison in Afghanistan on the Expert Witness Radio Show.

If you missed it, not to worry–there’s a podcast and you can listen to it here.

As a DEA agent for 25 years, Mike Levine has unique insight into the world of law enforcement in America. The Expert Witness Radio Show is Webcast LIVE every Monday evening starting at 5:00pm Eastern from the WBAI radio studios in New York City. Want to know more about Mike Levine, be sure to check out Mike´s Books. Mike is also the author of “Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War “. Deep Cover is a first-hand account of how the CIA, State and Justice Departments teamed up to destroy a DEA undercover sting operation that threatened to expose U.S. government ties to drug-financed governments in Mexico, Panama and Bolivia. He has a fascinating series coming up about murders on the border and US government involvement.
———————————————

Mike: This is Mike Levine back again and this is the Expert Witness radio show, and Mark Marshall with me on the wheels and dials, and we are talking to Jack Idema from prison in Afghanistan. What a surreal world this is. So, Jack, when we left off, you were on the ground, and you were the US government supported– actually were sort of part of the Northern Alliance, but liaison between the Northern Alliance and the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Is that about correct?

Jack: I was a commissioned officer in the United Front Military Forces, absolutely. Still am.

Mike: Yes, so you’re actually a commissioned officer in the Afghan Army, and of course in prison. I know everybody wants to know this, what really happened for the hunt for Bin Laden? You were a part of that.

Jack: First, in Tora Bora he escaped from his place in Jalabad to Tora Bora which I’m sure all Americans remember that battle. And we had an SF sniper a staff sergeant actually had him in his sights but he couldn’t get air support, and they called him off. This was on December 3, 4th, somewhere around there, 5th.

Mike: Hold on. That’s the first I’ve heard. Sniper had Bin Laden in his sights and couldn’t get air support?

Jack: Oh yeah. Had him down dead down to rights. Could have whacked him right there. He would have lost his whole team, because they didn’t have any support, but uh–he had him. And that was the first time. The second time was in February, anybody can go on the internet and search this-February-I think it was 3, 4 or 5th 2002, I had him in Datolla-14,000 feet above sea level, mountainous village, brought in an entire 500 man army from General Hasrat Ali. We were very close to getting him when they flew in some unmanned aerial vehicles and launched hellfire missiles before we could surround the village. The next time he got away.

I can tell you 5 times he got away because of bureacratic crap we had to call Centcom and get permission to do it. And this started kind of my battle with Centcom, the Central Command and Tommy Franks. These people were trying to run this war from a thousand miles away. You’ve got to put this in perspective. Where you’re looking at today, these 50,000 soldiers on the ground–this is not like this in 2001-2002. They thought–believe this when I tell you this, ok? The American Department of Defense thought that the first 300 special forces guys would be wiped out to the very man. They had no idea that we would take this country over in 90 days. They had no idea that we would drive the Taliban and Al Qaeda out that fast. They had some incredible teams.

Mike: Jack, are you saying we were intentionally sent in undermanned?

Jack: No, what happened was a guy named -Michelen Lt. Col down at Centcom-down at Centcom on the hill, said Rumsfeld wanted boots on the ground, and he wanted them on the ground now. And the conventional army said we need 6 months to gear up, just like Desert One, the original 1991 Desert One. We need 6 months to gear up, get our guys in, get supplies, support forces, tanks and armor. Special forces colonel said listen, I’ve got news for you. I can put 100 special forces guys on the ground in 7 days start and start killing these guys in 24 hours. And Rumsfeld went with it. He said “Do it. I want someone there now!” And the first couple teams, one very amazing American hero–John Buldock-he brought a team of 10 guys into Kalikata and within 72 hours they were blowing up taliban tanks and DRDMs and armored (cut out) and they were wasting them on the Kalikata front lines they were breaking the back of the Taliban extraordinary (unintelligible)

Americans now are saying let’s have this peace and appeasement and all of this–listen. Remember about this? People forget about the fact that people were diving out windows on 9/11 to avoid being burned to death. This is a war. War is a war of attrition-that means you kill the enemy. You don’t make peace with them, you don’t make nice with them, you don’t take ‘em in for a steak dinner- you kill ‘em. And believe me–these people deserve to die. They are the worst terrorists on the face of the earth. Look what they did on 9/11 and that is only one small part of what they want to do to us.

So Massoud’s forces, Buldock and some of the other guys like Captain Mark Mitch who was in Dostrum’s area up in the northwest of Afghanistan, they did a remarkable job, they really did. And quite frankly, it shocked the conventional forces and it shocked the Pentagon at how fast.

This is the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan: 100,000 of Massoud’s mujahideen picked up weapons and stood next to us and fought. In Iraq not a single Iraqi picked up a weapon to fight the Iraq government. So there’s a huge difference here; this is a country that wanted liberation, I talk about Afghanistan, and they were willing to die for that liberation, and all they needed was our air support and our advice. And we gave it to them. The bombing started October 12th and on November 12th, Kabul fell. And after Kabul fell, we headed to Tora Bora and other places. I took one of the Northern Alliance groups into Tora Bora later on into Shahi Khot and Anaconda, and it was really a (cuts out) as far as an unconventional war.

Mike: Jack–

Jack: And with 300-

Mike: Jack, why were you arrested? Why were you taken out? I don’t think this could have been done without US government sanction of getting you jailed, I understand you were tortured…I want you to go through it. Because we’re running out of time. What happened that you were taken off the field? What happened in the prison where you still are now? What went from where you were being tortured to now where you’re being taken care of in prison? Just explain that to the listeners.

Jack: Well the FBI tried unsuccessfully to capture Gulumsaki, a major Al Qaeda bomber whose brother-in-law’s named Doud, who’s the chief of security for Bin Laden. And after 3 or 4 months they couldn’t do it. Look it, if you can’t do it, I’ll go into the Northern Alliance and I’ll do it. But what America doesn’t know is that our our allies had been deserted by the Department of State. There was a secret memo out that said that the Department of Defense couldn’t work with the Northern Alliance anymore because it was counter to Karzai’s policy and Ambassador Khalizad’s policy to have this government controlled by the south Pashtun- the majority of the country.

Mike: So once again

Jack: Basically–

Mike: Once again we’re betraying people we were supporting at one point. Yeah, go ahead.

Jack: Like-I can’t even begin to tell you. We were deserting and betraying our allies. As we did that, what happened was I came back and said, ok, you’ve now had 90 days to find the guy. Put me on the ground I’ll find him in 30-45 days. The FBI had a lear jet along with their deputy chief of counter terrorism ready to go with us. But he had a medical problem with his heart, he couldn’t go on the mission- finally, I got very very frustrated, and I said to the pentagon if you can’t go in now, I’ll go in now and I’ll get the sonofagun. And so I did.

I flew my guys in. We flew into Afghanistan, and we met with the Northern Alliance. And I said, you guys know you’re not going to get our support anymore, but I’m here to tell you you roll with me and we’ll get the guy. And so they did. I met with the top core commanders, which are the top 9 department of defense guys in Afghanistan, and we got carte blanche to do whatever I had to do because I had a history with these guys. 40 some days later I had Gulumsaki in custody. Gulumsaki gave up the rest of the terrorist bomb cell. Within 5 days after getting Gulumsaki, I had about 95% of the cell. I had the explosives, I had the plans to blow up Bagram –they were going to drive fuel trucks into the barracks at Bagram aiforce base and kill a couple thousand American soldiers. I had their bomb plans to kill Qanooni who was the main opponent to Karzai and the leader now since Massoud died to the Northern Alliance. And I had the plans to kill Marshal Fahim the minister of defense, and all the other guys that were the top allies with the United States. All but two in custody.

Mark: If in fact you’re repeatedly successful, if this is in fact what this country’s trying to achieve, and what our intelligence agencies are trying to achieve, and what the military’s trying to achieve, my question is, why shut you down? If you’re in fact accomplishing what we want you to accomplish? You know?

Jack:I’m going to tell you something now I actually never mentioned– but now that the parliament election is over, now that Qanooni’s going to be the prime minister, now that the Northern Alliance will control this government in the next 15 days, I will tell you something I’ve never said before in an interview. And I swear to God this is the truth. 7 days before my arrest I sent a confidential memo back to the Pentagon. And that memo said that Karzai knew about the plot to kill his opponent. And that in fact, the State Department was in essence by not being proactive, by being inactive, they were in fact almost sanctioning this assassination. That memo shook the entire Department of Defense of the United States, believe this.

I got a phone call-I was sitting, now I took these guys I was in ISAF Headquarters in Security Systems Headquarters- in a conference room setting up helicopters for a raid the next day. When I got a phone call that said, I won’t tell you who it’s from, but I got a phone call from a very high ranking guy that said

“Jack, here’s the deal. You now answer to Captain Franks at the Embassy–a naval captain who’s with defense intelligence agency and you’ll answer directly to Centcom.”

I said

“No, I won’t, I won’t go to work for Centcom.”

He goes,

“Yes you will, that’s the only choice you have.”

I said,

“You put me to work for Centcom, then you’ve cut me off the Northern Alliance, you cut me off the Northern Alliance, and this mission will fail. And I’m so close to the last guys, you can’t believe it!”

He said,

“This is the orders, you work for Centcom.”

I can’t say on the air what I said, but it was not exactly “nice”. I hung the phone up and the ISAF guy said, the swedish liaison said,

“They put you under Centcom?”

I said,

“yeah. I’ll just ignore the phone call and do what I have to do.”

He said,

“Do you realize you are in deep deep ****?”

I said,

“yeah, yeah, I am. The question is do I have the helicopters tomorrow morning or not?”

He goes,

“You’ve got the helicopters and I didn’t hear that phone call.”

I said

“Fine, that’s all we need to know. We’ll take the last guys tomorrow.”

And we took the last guys tomorrow. We not only took the last guys the following day, we took them with the bomb plans to blow bagram up 24 hours later with the microphone system the pa system that Qanooni would use at his speech already wired with the explosives, and we took them with almost like serial killers they had pictures of all the ISAF and American guys they had killed– pictures from the papers all circled with little notes on ‘em. So, and these guys had Hekmatyar flags hanging in the compound. And believe me, this was not an easy raid that we did.

The point is that we did get a supreme court justice who was the brother to the main terrorist at the same time. Could have let that supreme court justice go, but it was like I don’t care if you’re the president, if you’re in the terrorist cell, you go down!

Mike:Yes. Amen. And that’s why this reminds me so much–just putting you under Centcom is kind of the equivalent of Able Danger where they located Mohammed Atta in the United States once before 9/11 and some suit came in and said well you can’t tell that to the FBI. Not that it would have done any good…but it’s the equivalent of putting you under Centcom when you don’t want to do that, you want to go right for the throat. Because we live in an era, a time, when a guy carrying a suitcase can pull a plug in downtown Manhattan and change life as we know it in one flash second. We can’t go through the kind of bureacracies– not only bureaucracies, but the kind of mickey mouse bureaucies that already let 9/11 happen. So how did you end up in jail, though, what happened, Jack?

Jack: So they had posters–no Afghan posters–these were american posters put out by the FBI. A guy named Gentry who was the FBI liaison at the embassy- trying to pick us up, because the last thing–I was calling a press conference like in 2 days. And we had had a meeting with Karzai the following morning at 10:00 the night before we were arrested. And I already met with the minister of defense, and all the top guys in the government, all of this is documented on tape.

Mike: All of this is eventually going to come to court according to your attorney. The Expert Witness Show is going to stay right on top of this–we’re going to have John Tiffany your attorney right here in New York come on and detail your lawsuit which should force at least some of this–make it available for the mainstream media, if they desire to look at real proof. Let me go right to a couple of things because we’re running out of time–I understand that when you were arrested and put in prison, you were tortured and the allegation is FBI agents were right there as you were being tortured.

Jack: Brent, who’s the Captain in the United Front Military Forces–he’s sitting next to me-he’s lost 8 teeth now from those beatings–the other guys–now, I’ll tell you–sitting across from me on a chair who is an Afghan CIA agent who is with American, British and French special forces for 4 years–most of his family were during the war–this guy’s a staunch anti-communist anti-terrorist guy who is a member of the Afghan government-he was released–he was freed in December. That’s almost a year ago. He’s still sitting next to me because he refused to go. He refused to leave us.

Mark: Can you address the part about the FBI being there while you were being tortured?

Mike: Where were you being tortured?

Jack:Zorro was electrocuted, he was tortured, he was beaten, he was chained. Another one of my guys, a Major in the United Front- he was electrocuted for 5 days we heard him scream-I had both of my retinas detached, my collar bone broken, my rotator cuffs in my shoulders both torn out, 5 broken ribs. John still saw how beat up I was when he got there a month and a half later. When this occurred, this was in the Saderat the extreme interrogation facility in Kabul, there were FBI guys in the hallway and they were laughing about it.

I shouldn’t say this, but I will: The head of NDS Amniat security- on the phone with Karzai, tortured me in his office–he beat the hell out of me. And I kept spittin’ blood on his brand new couches and he was like what are you doing? I said I want you to know that this is blood on this couch so I’m going to come back one day and kill you right here in this same office for what you did. Trust me. Retribution day is coming very soon, sooner than most people think in this country. Because the Northern Alliance is back in control, they are pro American, they are anti-terrorist, they are our true allies, make no mistake about it. If anybody thinks this is a democratic country, they are in sane. Because the people who are running this government are not pro-democracy. It’s just like when we put Saddam in power years ago, we put Noriega in power years ago, we put the same type of people in power again now when we put Karzai in power.

Mark: All this is standard theme

Jack: Standard theme.

Mark: …on this show is that we just just constantly run into the same thing; a decade goes by, and we do the same thing…a decade goes by, and we do the same thing.

Mike: It’s kind of like we pay these immense budgets to people to go out there-Lyndon Johnson once said about the CIA–he said-when rich folks don’t trust their sons they send them on down to the CIA… where they have 30 billion dollar budgets where they can give a billion bucks to somebody like Hekmatyar who was an accolyte of Bin Laden–we didn’t give any money to Bin Laden, no, but you gave it to Hekmatyar, which might as well have gone right to Bin Laden. And that billion dollars has been well used, and part of it, plus the training of the people who blew up the world trade center… we’re in such deep trouble. All we can do on this show is shine a light on the areas that the mainstream media is ignoring, and the areas that are going to bring us closer and closer to doomsday. When I say “doomstay” I mean literal nuclear or biological terror right here in the United States and we’ve got to have people on the ground who understand it.

It’s like getting in the ring–you don’t have but an eighth of a second to react to a lefthook and fight back, because if you don’t—somebody’s going to knock your brains out. And the brains of this country are close to being knocked out. And I don’t want that to happen, I love this country, that’s what this is all about–there is a monstrous problem between the FBI and defense intelligence and CIA, we’ve got to have media after it shining a light on it. We’ve got to have Congress with cojones to go after it–because the bottom line is, the families of the soldiers overseas are going to end up being in the war whether they like it or not–

Mark: Separate and apart from the lawsuit what’s going on right now with your case in terms of being stuck in prison and getting out?

Jack: The habeas corpus which means basically explain why you’re holding me here. Since the Afghan appeals court found us innocent. That case was filed March last year. It was a lot like some of these Gitmo cases- problem is, the case disappeared–nobody can find the case file 9 months later. New York federal court and the file disappeared! What are you telling me here?

Mark:Jack, technically speaking, who’s actually holding you now?

Jack: The U.S. The Afghans are not holding me, are you kidding me? You wait and see what happens when the Afghan parliament takes over this country.

Mark:No, but I’m asking–What I’m asking is-we haven’t made that clear–we’re saying that you’re in an Afghan prison, but what I was asking was who are your jailers and who’s holding you, and you know, that’s what I was asking.

Jack: The afghan appeals court found us completely innocent–all five judges. The chief judge was not even there for the trial– he was flown to the US along with our first judge, a former taliban guy who couldn’t even get a visa. The top justice was given a tour from the State Department for 3 weeks in Vegas, and Reno and Los Angeles and God knows where, came back with a new car, and then said,

“hey, I’m sorry we can’t release you yet–well the US administration is still standing, so, it’s just a problem you’re going to have to stay there. We’re sorry.”

Oh. You’re sorry. Ok, thanks very much.

Mike:There’s no way we can cover this… I want to talk about Mike Spann. The reason I want to talk about Mike Spann is because I have the videos of Mike Spann interrogating an Afghan prisoner on the ground and I don’t know which prison that was–what prison was that?

Jack: Qali Jangi in the north.

Mike: Qali Jangi in the north. Mike Spann is there with another CIA agent– and they’re there with–

Jack: Dave.

Mike: what’s his name?

Jack: Dave.

Mike: Ok, Dave….

Jack: I can’t say his last name on the radio.

Mike: You’re –except you’re not Robert Woodward.

Jack: (laughs) right.

Mike: There they are on the ground, they’re interrogating this Afghan prisoner, and within ten strides from them, are hundreds of prisoners, and I understand that days before some of them had been found to carry–or try to detonate hand grenades that were hidden on their bodies. So you have these suicidal prisoners who will gladly die to kill you.

And these two men are in this compound carrying automatic weapons. I’ve never seen anything that bad in my life as far as training goes. For Central Intelligence, I was astounded. Like every DEA agent knows you don’t walk into a prison particularly carrying guns. You don’t walk into a prison where prisoners can get you. Not to mention carrying guns when there are hundreds of them and of course they were killed. I was wondering about CIA training. This is so basic. It’s kind of like a professional baseball player who hasn’t learned to field ground balls. He’s a brave young man, I understand he was a brave young man–but the tragedy of putting a man in with that kind of training-now talking to you I heard you were there. So give me your version of that. Am I wrong in using this as an object lesson for police who I work with right now?

Jack: Mike had good training, but that was his first operational mission, he was a younger guy, former marine. Dave had no operational training he was an interpreter in Uzbekistan that spoke the language. There were no Afghans in that area they were all Pakistani, Arabs, Kuwaitis, Iraqis. Mike fought very very very bravely. Dave ran. You can see that on the videotapes he ran, I’m not telling you something you don’t know.

Mike: Yeah,

Jack He ran like uh–

Mike: We know what he ran like.

Jack: They say leave no man behind. He left Mike behind. Mike was not killed. Mike was taken downstairs in the pinkhouse it’s a small house inside Qali Jangi, he was tortured, his legs were broken for a good day and he was shot in the head twice. You don’t believe me, ask his father. He was executed by them.

Mike: I understand. I’m purely talking tactics to you, my friend–the tactic of doing it. What I thought is–How are they training these guys? This war on terror is becoming more and more like an undercover narcotics war. Infiltration…They once asked Jerry Jensen the head of DEA “What makes a good DEA agent?” And he said, “An alley cat in a suit”. It sounds like we’re just sending suits overseas. Please disabuse me of that, Jack, because I’m afraid for this country.

Jack: Three days before I left for this last mission in Afghanistan I had a meeting with a very top level guy in the CIA. And I said,

“Listen, what I need is some deconfliction here. I need to know what team’s on the ground, I need to make sure that I’m not going to interfere with them, they’re not going to interfere with me.” and you know, blah, blah.

He said

“there aren’t any”.

I said

“what?”

He said,

“Jack, I’m going to tell you something. We should have 300 guys like you on the ground–I’m going to tell you the honest to God truth. There are none. When you get there, you’ll be 1 and that’ll be it. So I’m letting you know that right up front. War has changed. Bagram can’t even leave the base after dark. You don’t understand. This is now a war of trying to reduce casualties and not engage the enemy and hope that we can just wait them out and appease them and bring them back into the fold.”

I was like,

“you gotta be kidding me”.

He said,

“No, I’m telling you the truth. You know, the fact is I have a tactic that is unlike most. You take a couple of us, and you keep getting searched in local clothes, and drive in the middle of nowhere and hope we get what we get. “

This thing that was first said about us driving around Kabul arresting guys with long beards, that’s completely bullcrap. We were out in the middle of nowhere looking for guys and we had good intelligence on them and we were finding them.

Mark:I was just going to say that one of the things that we’ve heard numerous times is Senior military people talking about the way that this war’s being conducted and the fact you didn’t put enough boots on the ground, so therefore you did end up being in a totally defensive position as opposed to being able to go in and do what we need to do and get out.

Mike: I hope the listeners understand that you can’t have the mainstream media not covering a man like Jack Idema. Whatever you think, of course he came, before we did the show, he came highly recommended, again, from people I know their first concern in this world is protecting us; every American. That’s all they’re concerned about. They know that when you saw those planes hit the buildings, the World Trade Center, you know anything is possible. Now we’re sitting here and we’re interviewing Jack Idema-while FBI and quote unquote ” experts” are saying nuclear terror is a matter of when, not if.

I hope you listeners understand that you have got to look at this closely, mainstream media is not. And ask yourself why they are not. And for that reason, I want you guys to get on our website ExpertWitnessRadio dot o-r-g so that we can funnel to you the documentation. Because Jack’s attorney for this Habeas hearing has compiled an enormous amount of evidence that shows that everything that Jack Idema is saying is documented-is at the very least is backed up by evidence and every American should know that. And I understand that he’s now formulating a defamation of character suit against CBS or somebody. Did you know anything about that?

Jack: CBS had come to the compound with the permission of the department of defense. And they said oh, yeah it’s a private prison. I didn’t have a private prison. We had over 50 safehouses in and around Kabul. CIA, Specats, Special forces, where we’d bring guys in and question them, and turn them over to Bagram. I’d already turned all my guys over to Bagram. I was turning these people over to Bagram that afternoon when this happened. We didn’t hold them in prison, we just brought them there to question ‘em.

Mike: You’ve been found not guilty anyway, but you’re still in jail.

Jack: I want to answer one thing for your listeners. Did I ever torture anybody? The answer is hell no! I never tortured anybody. You know why? Because if you’re Lynndie England and you’ve put some guy on a leash– a muslim guy naked on a leash, I can guarantee you neither he nor his friends will ever cooperate. But if you if you take that guy in and you just keep him up for 2 days talking to him, and you give him kabob and you give him miranda soda, and you convince him that he’s got a job with you, believe me he is going to change sides. This is absolute.

Mike:Hold it right there. Jack, if you look at the video of Mike Spann, his training–they were pulling this guy by the hair on video, they were doing exactly the opposite that I would have done as an informer-and I’ve flipped thousands of informants.

Mark: One thing John McCain said; if you torture me I’ll tell you that there’s an elephant floating 6 feet in the air- I’ll tell you anything you want just to get you to stop torturing me.

Mike:What Jack Idema told me is part of the secret-I always said that there are some people who have a talent for how to work with informants–Jack has it.

Mark:We’re out of time.

Jack: Nice talking to you guys, thanks a lot.

jack idema
afghanistan
Technorati Search for Jack Idema

More blogs about task force sabre 7.