Radiolab - The Other Latif: Episode 4

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

The Other Latif Radiolab’s Latif Nasser always believed his name was unique, singular, completely his own. Until one day when he makes a bizarre and shocking discovery. He shares his name with another man: Abdul Latif Nasser, detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government paints a terrifying picture of The Other Latif as Al-Qaeda’s top explosives expert, and one of the most important advisors to Osama bin Laden. Nasser’s lawyer claims that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he was never even in Al-Qaeda. This clash leads Radiolab’s Latif into a years-long investigation, picking apart evidence, attempting to separate fact from fiction, and trying to uncover what this man actually did or didn’t do. Along the way, Radiolab’s Latif reflects on American values and his own religious past, and wonders how his namesake, a fellow nerdy, suburban Muslim kid, may have gone down such a strikingly different path.   Episode 4: Afghanistan  Latif investigates the mystery around Abdul Latif’s classified time in Afghanistan. He traces the government’s story through scrappy training camps, bombed out Buddhas, and McDonald’s apple pies to the very center of the Battle of Tora Bora.  Could Abdul Latif have helped the most sought-after and hated terrorist in modern history, Osama bin Laden, escape? The episode ends with a bombshell jailhouse interview with Abdul Latif, the most reliable evidence yet of what was going on in this man’s mind in the months after 9/11. This episode was produced by Annie McEwen, Sarah Qari, Suzie Lechtenberg, and Latif Nasser. Fact checking by Diane Kelly and Margot Williams. Editing by Jad Abumrad and Soren Wheeler. With help from Neel Dhanesha, Kelly Prime, and Audrey Quinn. Original music by Jad Abumrad, Alex Overington, Annie McEwen, and Amino Belyamani.  Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

Before we start, a quick warning, this episode contains some graphic language, and it may not be suitable for all listeners. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab.

From W-N-Y-S. See? See? Yeah. I'm Latif Nassar. This is the other Latif. Episode 4, Afghanistan. When we last left him, Abdul Adif Nasser walked in to get his paycheck from Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Sudan, only to find nobody.

I would imagine there would just be empty offices, kind of windows flapping open. I mean, nothing there. Everyone's gone. Everyone's cleared out on one day. He didn't even know that Osama and his inner circle had any plans to leave. They just ghosted him. That same spring, I was 10 years old. My family lived in the suburbs of Toronto, and at our local mosque, we would watch videos and news reports

about Muslims being persecuted around the world. The summer before, Bosnian Serbs had massacred 7,000 Muslims around Srebrenica. Russians were attacking Chechen Muslims. Palestine was constantly in the news, and a few years later, it would be Kosovo. All these stories about all these Muslims being targeted, many being chased out of their homes. The videos I remember seeing most were about Afghanistan,

about how the Taliban prevented girls my age from going to school. How they drove moderate Muslims like us into hiding, sometimes even killed them. My dad actually started raising money for organizations to help people who were fleeing the Taliban. One of them was the Aga Khan University Medical College in Pakistan. He raised so much money for them that a few years later, they invited him to visit. And he took me along to Karachi.

I was 15. It was my first long-distance flight. And after we got there, after we toured the university, we got on a bus and they took us to a refugee camp. We met Afghans who had walked for weeks through the Spingar Mountains just to cross the border into Pakistan. At the camp, I don't remember much, but I do remember looking into a tent and seeing a woman sleeping on a rug on the floor, holding the tiniest baby I had ever seen.

It told me that she had had the baby just a few days before, in the middle of her death-defying mountain hike. I cried harder than I was. I had ever cried before. Back in Canada, other people in our community literally dropped everything to go help. My friend Samira's parents, Rocheon and Rahim Thomas, they were an optometrist and ophthalmologist with a thriving practice and three kids in Vancouver uprooted their lives to go give eye care to Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

And start an elementary school in Kabul. Those were things in our family that we, yeah, that we were sort of, sort of, Anyway, all of that is to say that what Shelby says Abdul Latif Nasr did next make sense to me. That while he was in Sudan... Stories of Muslims being persecuted around the world did have an effect on him. He was seeing the same kinds of videos and news reports that I was seeing at my mosque. He was looking to learn more about what was happening in Chechnya and what there was to be done about it. And like people I know, he decided to act.

Exactly. In short, she says, he decided to go to one of these war-torn countries to try to help his fellow Muslims. So he used what little life savings he had to buy a plane ticket, first to Yemen, and then he hoped to Chechnya, where he could help by, I don't know, I imagine distributing food and medicine and supplies. But as for how he wanted to help, I just had trouble imagining it. Like, he was poor, if not broke, didn't know anyone in those places. as far as I can tell, had no medical experience,

no war zone experience, no charity experience, was not affiliated with an established aid group. And so I'd ask Shelby, like, if he was actually trying to help, how was he trying to help?

Like, did he have a sense of, like, I want to be a, like a... Uh, Yeah. Like a missionary, or, like, like, was there a sense of, like,

how he would help other Muslims? is just... Classified. Uh, okay, virtually every question I asked about this period in Abdul Latif Nasser's life... Classified, classified, classified. I got the same reply. Sorry, I'm just looking to see if there's anything else.

No, please. Yeah. Classified. Classified. Mm-hmm. She couldn't talk about it, or maybe she just thought it wouldn't help her client if she did. I don't know. So, from the time Abdel-Lathif leaves Sudan all the way up to his Catholic.

I really have one version of events, the U.S. government version. Some of this version is based off of Abdul Latif Nasser's own confessions, information he gave up during interviews or interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. Now you might think, confessions are confessions. But the thing to keep in mind is, just like basically every other detainee at Gitmo, Abdel Likovnazor was tortured. Stripped naked, chained to the floor. frozen water dumped on their head, loud music, deprivation of water, clothing, warmth,

heated to the point of danger, frozen to the point of danger, being told, you know, if you admit to this, you can go free. If you don't, we will find and rape your mother. And according to many experts, including neuroscientist Shane O'Meara, torture is one of the most unreliable ways to get true information. out of a person. So remember that. Let that inform everything you hear in the rest of this episode from here on out. Okay, so I want to tackle three of the most salient accusations the government has made about Abdul Latif Nasser, about things he supposedly did during his time in Afghanistan.

We're going to take them one by one. First, one. Training camps. In an interrogation, Abduladiv talks about why he left Sudan. He says one day he was in the market in Khartoum and he met a Libyan guy. Guy was 30 about his age. He and this guy gets talking and go back to the Libyan guy's place where that guy puts on a VHS tape.

The video is two hours long and shows Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya being massacred. The video also, and I'm quoting here, focused on the glory of fighting jihad and the reasons why an individual should go to fight for Islam. In the interrogation, Abdu Latif says that when he saw that video, he decided he had to act. According to the government, he became, quote, convinced that he wanted to, quote, conduct extremist operations.

And he even chose a nomadigir, a battle alias. Taha. which, I mean, at first felt kind of like a terrorist origin story B movie. Like, he watches a VHS tape, jumps off the couch and says, I am Taha. But then again, this sort of thing does happen. Literally, while I was reporting this, a Canadian Muslim guy, five years younger than me, from my hometown, pled guilty to leaving Canada to try to fight alongside ISIS in Syria. when they asked him why he said he saw some videos online. Anyway.

According to the government documents, Abdul Latif flies from Sudan to Yemen, where he's supposed to meet a contact that the Libyan guy gave him, who in turn will help him sneak into Chechnya to fight. The contact asks him about his combat experience. Abdulah Thief tells him he hasn't got any. The contact tells him to sit tight. I'll make arrangements.

But after seven whole months of waiting, hanging around a mosque, Abduladiv gets a message. He cannot go to Chechnya. The door is closed. But he discovers another option. Somewhere he could go and train to fight whomever and wherever he wanted. And he arrived in the desert city of Jalalabad Afghanistan in late 1997,

32 years old. According to an interrogation log, he was staying at a guest house, kind of like a hostile or a Muslim version of the YMCA. He said he was scared to go outside by himself because he didn't have a beard, and he worried that the Taliban would harass him. He waited a week, grew out his beard, and went from guest house to guest house

until he eventually got the head of one of those guest houses to introduce him to a commander in charge of a bunch of al-Qaeda training camps. And that guy assigned him to Ul Farouk. the largest al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. This is the camp where Osama bin Laden himself visited and lectured. This is the camp where at least seven of the 9-11 hijackers were trained. Now, asking Shelby if any of this is true about Abdul-Ladif, did he live in military training camps in Afghanistan?

Classified. She gives me the common refrain. Did he train in military training camps in Afghanistan? Classified. Did he train others at military training camps in Afghanistan? So no clearer on that point. What the government documents don't tell you much or really anything about is what Al Farouk was actually like. Which, when you really stare at it, definitely complicates things.

Can you turn the volume up of it? Again, author and journalist, Kathy Scott Clark. Hey, can you hear me? Yes. Hello. How are you? A good afternoon for you, I guess. Kathy's written extensively about these training camps. Can you kind of like paint a scene for me a little bit? Like how, yeah, what were they like?

So, I mean, a bit grim, a bit limited in their facilities. I mean, you'd have a few sort of small huts, a very basic cooking area. Target's set up made of stone, hopefully a river summer nearby, you can wash. I mean, no proper sanitation facilities. Probably a large hill

that you'd be made to run up and down 50,000 times a day. A place for young male Mujahideen to go off and deal with their personal desires in an appropriate fashion.

That was about it, really. What do you mean by that? That's like an outhouse? Yeah, what do you mean by that? It had to be somewhere where you could go and jerk off. What? Apparently, these camps tended to have a dedicated masturbatorium.

Yes. Anyway, Ulfaroog had about 200 trainees at a time. And if you watch the Al-Qaeda training and recruitment videos, the impression you get is that the people at these camps are serious and dangerous and utterly dedicated to killing Americans. But then I came across this book from an Australian guy. Ghetto. I'm David Hicks. David Hicks, a former Gitmo detainee.

I want to thank all get-up members who helped me get out of the hell that was Guantanamo B. He was actually detainee number two. And he was at that training camp a little while after Abdu Latif. He wrote about his time there, about many of the guys who were training with them. It was a conglomerate of people from all around the world that went there and received basic military training for people that were interested in helping in, say, Chechny or Kashmi or somebody else. And this one paragraph he wrote really surprised me. Okay, so I'm quoting the book.

I know it might sound strange to some people, but some of the young men who came for military training thought it would make an interesting holiday during their time off from work or uni. They left the camps without any intention of getting involved in any conflict. They just saw it as a travel experience. Others trained for the personal challenges,

such as getting physically fit. Some young men wanted to protect their families. Most of the people I met never seemed to have any intention of joining a military force and engaging in a combat situation. Now, you could argue that David Hicks is downplaying the danger of the camp. But if he's even 50% right, this is totally different than how I always imagine it. A way motleyer crew of guys, not just these, you know, die-hard Al-Qaeda foot soldiers. So if Abdul Adiv Nasser did attend one of these camps,

how are we supposed to interpret that? If he was there, how serious was he about it? Was he just working out? Was he trying to prepare himself to help Muslims in need? Or was his goal to become a serious Al-Qaeda fighter? According to U.S. government documents, Abdullah Diyiv Nasser was training to become the latter. And he was selected to attend higher-level training camps,

where he supposedly learned about advanced guerrilla warfare tactics, poisons and explosives. He allegedly received training in hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, TNT, mortars, C3, C-4, and so on. And apparently he was so good with explosives, he started teaching it himself. And according to the U.S. government, in March, 2001, Abdul Latif Nasser put those skills to use. And this is big point against Abdulaf Nasser 2. Number 2.

Which is a huge act of terrorism and destruction. But it's not 9-11. No, he wouldn't have known anything about 9-11. I just need to be super clear here for a second, because going into this reporting journey, that was... That was actually one of my exact questions. I wanted to ask you, I realized, is would he have known about 9-11, but you think he would not have beforehand?

Absolutely. No way I can say that definitively, because 99% of people associated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at the time didn't know anything about what was coming. Everyone, including, much to my surprise, the U.S. government is explicit that Abdullah Adiv Nasser had nothing to do with 9-11. In fact, in a U.S. government document from 2005, you will find the following statement, quote, detainee did not agree with the attack on September 11, 2001. He further thought the people killed were innocent, it was against Islamic principles to attack innocent people,

and that Osama bin Laden was wrong. Not at all what you'd expect from Al-Qaeda's top explosive expert. Anyway. Number two. Bamian. Bamian. Two of the world's largest statues of Buddha earned Bamian the nickname, Valley of the Gods. February 2001, the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, issued a decree ordering the destruction of all non-Muslim

statues in Afghanistan. In particular, two sandstone Buddha statues in the town of Bamian. These statues were hand-carved in the 6th century. They're a UNESCO world heritage site, considered one of the cultural wonders of the world. But to Mullah Omar, they were pagan idols challenging the oneness of God. These statues survived Genghis Khan and the Mongols in the 1200s, Orangzeb and the Mughals in the 1600s,

the British invading in the 1800s, the Soviet bombs in the 1970s and 80s, but what they didn't survive, according to the U.S. government, was one person. Abdul Latif Nasser. According to the declassified U.S. government documents, quote, under orders of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar,

Nasser placed mines in the statues and blew them up. The serene giants that had watched over Bamayyan for some 1500 years fell, blown up by Afghanistan's Taliban government. I tried for months to get the world expert on the Bamian Buddha statues on the phone with me. Eventually, his daughter called and told me that he couldn't do the interview because even now, almost 20 years later, it's still just too painful for him to talk about it. You can come right here and you can sit down.

Right after that call, I happened to go hang out with a friend of mine, Omar Mollick, who's a cinematographer and filmmaker. I brought it up as if to say, like, how could someone feel this intensely about a statue? These are objects. But what I didn't realize is that Omar, he felt basically the same way that expert did. Just got under your skin. Yes, it did. These weren't just rocks.

Yeah, it did get to me. He was in Afghanistan back in 2011, working as a war photographer. And one day he went to Bamion to take pictures of where the statues used to be. How big is it? Is it like a city? Or is it like a region? Or is it like a town? A small town that's a little spread out.

Dusty and open. When the sun goes down, it casts these long shadows. Someone will come by with a mule and cart, and the shadows they will cast. We'll just stretch on right into the horizon. And then as you approach this cavity where the Buddhas were, And that's got deep shadows in it as the light moves around it. What did it feel like seeing that?

Oof, I mean, it, um... He said the true meaning of the loss of these statues didn't actually hit him until he walked past them and started moving up into the mountain itself. Along the way, in these crevices and little holes, which from the ground you might not immediately recognize, were ancient homes built into the wall. And these apple-cheeked children, you know,

sort of squinting and giggling from windows and people inviting you in. And, you know, I remember walking into one of these homes and we sat down. And one of the kids was finishing reading the Quran. And then turned to us to sort of speak and service tea and all of that. And I thought they're living in the Buddha with this Quran. And no one's batting an eyelid. These Muslim families had been living inside these huge symbols to a different religion for generations. And everyone was proud of them.

Like sort of everyone there to a team. Yeah, that was a beautiful. That's an amazing thing. We're proud that. We love that. It was on the tongue of every person we met there. I was standing in a place where every single thing around me is proof. Physical, tangible, proof that a Muslim,

and Islamic region had exercised for over millennia the kind of tolerance and inclusion that allowed the Buddhas to survive until only very recently and that these people had actually a more inclusive sense of who they were as Afghans in that region than we probably do now as Americans right now. Which should be a sobering thought. These Buddhists were proof that we could all get along. You know, and that's what they destroyed. After talking to Omar, I couldn't help but take the destruction of these statues personally.

Like, this is a uniquely heinous act against all of us. It's everybody's loss. But the thing is, when I asked Shelby about all of this, did he blow up the Bamiyan Buddha statues? Absolutely not. Okay. She was uncharacteristically candid and blunt. It's offensive to him. that someone would do that, and thus it's offensive that he'd be in any way implicated,

especially given that he wasn't anyway. After that conversation with Shelby, I started going back through the government documents to try to figure out where exactly this accusation came from. As far as I can tell, Abdul Latif never confessed to blowing them up. Instead, the government's evidence on this point, at least what's declassified, comes from the statements of two different Guantanamo detainees. Two. A Saudi guy and a Yemeni guy.

The Saudi guy is named Al-Jadani, and he said that he heard that Abu Taha, Nasser's alias, placed the explosives. That's it. That's all it says. He's a testimony and not even implicating Nasser directly just his alias. So I did a little research on this guy. Turns out at the time the Buddhas were destroyed, this guy wasn't even in Afghanistan.

He was in Saudi Arabia. I also found an instance where a district court judge threw out Al-Jadani's testimony in a similar case as, quote, inherently unreliable and as, quote, amounting to no more than jailhouse gossip. So that's the Saudi guy who claimed Abdul Latif Nasser blew up the Buddhas. The other guy, a Yemeni, Yassin Muhammad Bissarda, told interrogators that he heard from a fellow Yemeni whom he met in Kandahar prison that Nasser helped the Taliban destroy the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues. He said that Nasser placed mines in the statues and blew them up under orders of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Again, secondhand information, but this time more specific. Bessarda's name actually pops up in Abdel Dief's file probably more than anybody else.

He describes specific moments where he had direct conversations with Abdul Latif Nasser. This is the same guy who said that Abduladif Nasser was one of the most important military advisors to Osama bin Laden. But it's tricky. Because this guy, Bessarda, this star witness, if you will,

is kind of fan. The U.S. government's most prolific informant at Guantanamo Bay. For the course of dozens of interviews, Bissarra provided evidence against... At least 123 of his co-prisoners. At least 123 other prisoners there. 123 different detainees at Guantanamo Bay. That's an extraordinary number. And I found out through reporting by Del Quentin Wilbur and David Lay that in exchange

for all of this information, he was being given gifts. While most detainees at Gitmo were forced to live a pretty Spartan life, this guy got his own private cell, a CD player, coffee, chewing tobacco, a truck magazine, other items, which may or may not be porn. And my favorite of all, McDonald's apple pies, all of this stuff, and the fact that he ratted on 123 people. Of course, it does raise the question whether he has not been exaggerating. Slowly, it becomes apparent to even his interrogators

that he's probably not telling the truth. For example, at one point, Basarda names a bunch of guys who were at a training camp with him during a specific time frame. But then a military official finds that not a single guy he named was even in Afghanistan at that time. You can actually see the doubt unfold over time in the documents themselves.

These disclaimers start a case. appearing next to his claims in detainee reports. I'm quoting here. In every interview where Bissarda was questioned on detainee, Bessarda has changed his story. Or this one. Research into the other detainee's timelines does not readily support Bessarda's information.

The most extreme of all, Bissarda, quote, should not be relied upon. Trusting him strains the imagination. Okay. So, O for two. There is literally no other evidence that the U.S. military has publicly acknowledged to argue that Abdul Latif Nasser was involved in the Bami and Buddha bombings. That's it. Now, I wanted desperately to talk to these two guys, to hear the story from their perspective. But I couldn't get in touch with either of them. So instead, I went back to that DOD document and looked for other names of guys who had said incriminating things about Abdul Latif.

None of them could or would talk to me, except for this one guy. Yeah, my name is Mohamedu'll Salahi. I'm a Mauritian citizen, 47 years old, electrical engineer, information technology. Mohamedu Salahi was in Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2016. Really, I just have one question for you, and it's maybe a difficult one, which is that in reading Abdul Latif Nasr's DOD detainee assessment file there was this quote and I wanted

to ask you about it. The quote is detainee, which is Nasser, admitted he attended the wedding in Kandahar of Osama bin Laden's son, Muhammad bin Laden Mohammedu Udsalahi, that's you, corroborated detainee's participation

in the February 2001 ceremony. Did you say that? What do you make of that? I absolutely have not the slightest idea. And this is possible that I told them that, even though this is the first time I ever heard that he attended this wedding. My understanding that he was in Afghanistan much, much later than I, and we never crossed path ever in Afghanistan.

I left Afghanistan around March of 1992, and this wedding is February of 2001. How possible would I know about a wedding that happens in February of 2001 when I was thousand of miles away? So it was impossible for me to be there. Absolutely impossible. But why would you have said yes to that if you did say yes to it? Because I went through so much pain and suffering, including sleep deprivation, multiple sexual assault, the threat against my dear members of my family, including my mother, that I said, I'm not going to make this anymore. Whatever they want me to say, I would say.

For instance, like this wedding, those green picture, I saw them, they showed them. me million times, but I kept saying, I don't know about this event. And then when they, after the torture, I told him, oh, of course it happens. And everything like they asked me, I say yes. Could you talk to Bessarder? Oh, Bessarda. Bessarda. Oh, I tried. I tried. I really tried. He's in Spain. From what I've heard is that there are so many people who are very angry at him and potentially even want to kill him. He's sort of deep in hiding. To be honest to you, I don't think Anyone wants to kill him? You think?

Everybody knows that. He's very disturbed mentally. Yeah. He tried to kill himself. You know that. No, I did not know that. Yeah, he tried to commit to society. Oh, wow.

Yeah, it was very hard. You know, he was very young. And they kept giving him cheeseburger, hamburger, pizza. And he kept just saying random stuff. And they know he was lying. Everybody knows he was lying. Everybody knows 252 was lying. You know, including interrogator, they laugh about him. They joke about him. Do you sort of, do you blame him or do you think it's like it was such a...

I would be very honest with you, at first, yeah, I did not, I did blame him. You should say there is no loyalty if someone commits crime. But if someone didn't, then you should not lie about people. And then when they, I was so angry when they told me that our detainee in life. about me. But when I was tortured, I did not blame them anymore. Because I was saying, wow, this is

one way for Allah to show me that I am a weak person too. You know? Yeah. Even though they wouldn't talk to me, I went through all the rest of the stories of the guys who gave

incriminating information on Abdul Latif Nasir. Now, there's a lot of classified evidence that I'm not allowed to see. But as far as I can in all the leaked and declassified evidence about Abdullahif Nasser, there is not a single-named human source who seems reliable, stable, and non-coerced. And it makes you wonder, like, if this is the standard of evidence, if this is the actual evidence, I'm not nearly convinced he blew up those statues.

I'm not convinced of anything. Howdy. This is Blake Crozier from Nashville, Tennessee. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. This is the other Latif. I'm Latif Nasser.

Three. The third major accusation that the U.S. government holds against Abdul-Lathif Nasser is that he was allegedly a top military advisor to Osama bin Laden and fought on his behalf at the Battle of Toribora. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America. This is the big battle in Afghanistan that happened right after 9-11. Two airplanes have crashed. The towers had just fallen.

And even the government agency that specialized in gathering Intel was out for blood. My order was to kill him and cut his head. head off. Osama bin Laden's head? Yes. And bring his head back for the president. Whoa. Of course, I wouldn't have cut his head off. We would have just killed him and buried him. This, by the way, is former senior CIA officer Gary Burson. He served in the director of operations for 24 years. It served in the U.S. military before that. He was leading one of the first American teams in Afghanistan post-9-11. It's funny to me because, like, you're CIA, like, your intelligence people. Correct. But the goal here wasn't to capture and to question and stuff.

Like, you were like, we're going to kill these guys. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Was that weird? Did that feel like you were like, oh, I'm doing somebody else's job here? Or like, how did that feel? Look, you know, they had just killed 3,000 people in the United States. Didn't feel weird. It felt like revenge. That's what it felt like. Okay, so less than a month after 9-11, the United States enters Afghanistan, seizes the capital city from the Taliban government. Okay, so Kabul Falls. Bin Laden fled the city, and he moved in a very, very large convoy. And according to government documents, Abdul Latif Nasser followed close behind him. A day or two later, Bernson gets a tear.

We got a phone call, a satellite phone. From a town 60 kilometers east of Kabul. He had one of our sources down there. And the source said, I've got a visual on bin Laden and his people. They were headed for the mountain range of Spingar, specifically to a cave complex called Torabora. Torabora high up in the white mountains, close to the border with Pakistan. Al-Qaeda's only remaining stronghold. Gary was part of a skeleton crew of only eight guys.

So to follow them, he needed to assemble a bigger army. I built a force of 2,000 men. That took about two days. It cost me about $4 million. Okay. I had a big rubber made trunk of $14 million with me. And I made my communications officer sleep on top of it every night. Whoa.

Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Wow. Wow. Okay, let's have. Let's keep going. They headed south.

We got down to a schoolhouse at the foot of these mountains. It's a huge mountain range. And Bersen knew that bin Laden was gathering his forces somewhere nearby. Can you describe the mountains a bit for me? They're covered sort of in like pine trees. They're very sharp. They're steep. To find bin Laden?

We took four of my men. Sent them up into the mountains. With donkeys and 10 Afghan guards. They climb for hours. Heading toward a high point in the mountain range. Hoping to be able to look down and get a view of bin Laden's people. And so at that point. Like, how do they even know where to look?

Well, we were listening to radio comps. Oh, really? Yes. one of our guys who's a native Arabic speaker who've been listening to bin Laden for 10 years all of his intercepts. We had him moved out there, positioned, and he was with the team that was there, and he was doing the intercept himself.

Wow. Side note, I'd later learn that the Al-Qaeda folks knew the Americans could hear them, and they even warned bin Laden about it. His response, let them listen. Quote, I want them to know where to come. Bin Laden was assuming that the Americans would parachute in, just like the Soviets had back in the 70s. And if he could lure them to Torabora, a landscape he knew and they didn't, he'd have the advantage.

Well, we're on top of them. It worked. Gary's men find what they're looking for. What exactly are they seeing? Down below, there's a valley, and in that valley, there was a single road up into this position. They see bin Laden has set up camp there. Vehicles, tents, weapons. He's down below us. He's got roughly 800 to 1,000.

I would end every one of them extinguished because I saw every one of them as a potential pilot that could fly a plane into a skyscraper. According to government documents, Abdulaziv Nasser was one of these men. He requests permission to initiate combat and start calling an airstrikes. I said, of course, immediately. They radio for the planes. They come in, they circle over, they get lined up. And Gary's Ben in the mail. break out this glorified laser pointer called a soflam.

Unbelievable technology. They turn it on. Paint the targets. Aim this invisible beam of infrared light at a very specific point in the camp below them. Like the windshield of a truck. Incredible accuracy with these devices. The airplane would come in. Release ordinance.

That ordinance would find the light. Lock onto the invisible beam. And then ride the light right into the target. I mean, they could literally fly very, very large bombs right in the window of your house. ABC's Dan Harris reports now from the front line. At Torabora today, U.S. fighter planes and B-52s dropped their payload. It was very, very effective. Well over 400 bombs and been dropped in the area on Thursday and Friday alone.

And after 56 hours of this beating, and they had their armor and their vehicles and their trucks and their communications, destroyed, they then crawled up into the mountains of Torobora right behind them. This whole time, Bernson's men are able to hear Al-Qaeda communicating with each other over the radio. We actually listened to Bin Laden apologized to all of his people, too, as all this was going on. What do you say? He told them he was sorry that he had led them into there, that they all needed to fight and sacrifice for the prophet. He prayed with them on the radio. Wow.

Wow. At some point, things were looking so bad that Osama bin Laden wrote his will. Quote, Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life. And the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart. And then we came in and we threw a blue 82 at them, which was a 16,000 pound device was dropped in there. What does that? What does that mean? It's like the size of a Volkswagen. This is, this is, this is, You know, they use those in Vietnam to make airfields out of the jungle. Eventually, the Americans discovered that this bomb not only collapsed caves all along the mountain, but according to captured al-Qaeda fighters, it literally vaporized men deep in the caves.

We thought we killed him. I'll be honest you. I thought I had him. I thought he was dead. But he crawled out of there. And so, you know, three or four months later, when I'm back in the United States, or five months later, there's, you know, he comes on TV. there's a yellow-colored video that he did where he's announcing that he's alive. He could have knocked me over with a feather at that point.

I thought he was done. A few days later, Abdul Latif Nasser was found in a village two days hike from Toribora on the way to the Pakistani border and was turned over to the Northern Alliance. He had on him an AK-47 and $800 U.S. dollars. Of course, I asked Shelby, what happened? Hmm. No surprise. Unfortunately, that's not something I can answer. answer because it's not unclassified. But the government likes to characterize it as, you know,

if you were anywhere near Torobora, never mind walking in one direction or another, you were definitely in the caves with Osama bin Laden that day, helping him in some capacity. And the truth of the matter is the region of Torabora and the escape routes used by civilian women, children, you name it, is an enormous region. Right. And is, as far as those in the area were concerned, one of the only ways to survive the bombing campaign. As far as this capture, Shelby pointed to the bounty flyers that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had talked about at the time. We have large rewards out.

Targeting any bearded or Arab-looking men. We have leaflets that are dropping like snowflakes in December in Chicago. How much are these bounties? It ranges up to $3,000 per person, which of course that was actually a lot of money. Okay, well, okay, so how did they... Like, where was he, like, in house? In a car, yeah, is like, is there any, like, even...

And who was the guy that, like, grabbed him? Yeah. Unfortunately, those are the details that I don't... That we've gone over in classified proceedings and don't have unclassified. Okay, so what we can know was that he was in Toribora. So what you're saying is he was in Toribora, he was fleeing and then he was apprehended by somebody and then sold for a bounty to the American government.

Is that that all true? Yeah. And we can't get any. There's no more specificity than that, right? Right. I ran some of those general ideas by Bernson to see if he thought they were plausible. Let me explain something to you. Okay.

Let me explain something to you right now. Sure. If you were not a jihadist, you wouldn't have gone south. Meaning you wouldn't have gone to Torabora at all. You'd have just stayed on the road highway? one for another hour and a half and walked into Pakistan. Okay. Gary says if he was just a normal person trying to escape. It was easy to take a bloody bus. Okay. He could have got on a bus in Jalalabad. He could have bloody walked. He chose to go south with bin Laden. Why? Because he's a member of Al-Qaeda

and the force is trying to stay together. They're trying to defend themselves and fight together. critical mass that way. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, okay, if I'm playing devil's advocate, I mean, there are people who run towards battle zones or front lines who are, who are, I mean, the example in my head is like a medic or someone, like someone who actually thinks they could if they, if he was an aid worker theoretically. And let me explain something. Yeah, sure. They, there's no, they don't know there's a battle going on. They're running south to stay together. There's no army. They don't see a battle coming. Not until, not until the plant, not till bomb. start dropping. Right. His story falls apart. It's stupid. At this point, I felt stuck.

Like, I could see all the sides. I could see Shelby's account. And honestly, I wanted to believe that account. Like I said, the desired help, that made sense to me. I'd felt it. At the same time, as much as I didn't want to admit it, Gary's skepticism also made sense to me. Why was this guy there to begin with, if not to fight. And through it all, I just felt haunted by this image, this image of this pinpoint laser-guided bomb, juxtaposed against this just fog bank, this informational haze that is actually justifying that very bombing. So anyways, I was sitting in that haze, not knowing what to think. Until now, this is, I'm just a very bombing. I'm just so I'm just kind of champing

at the bit to talk to you. Okay, that's fine. I met this guy. My name is John Lee Anderson. I'm a reporter with a New Yorker. I covered the war in Afghanistan in the wake of 9-11. John Lee is one of the few people who knows firsthand what happened to Abduladiv Nasser next

and is allowed to tell me about it. So this is I'm pretty sure it's, so it's December 2001. I'd been in country since September. He'd been there on the mountainside. at Torabora, watching the bombs fall. It was a very strange and surreal scene

where you could sort of make people out on the scree and the distant glaciers of the mountains. There were explosions. But the journalists were kept back by and large from the fighting. And as the war was winding down, John Lee found himself at a Northern Alliance prison camp with the rare opportunity to interview two Al-Qaeda prisoners. Nobody at that moment had, to my knowledge, interviewed someone who said they were from Al Qaeda.

The day he went to visit the prisoners was bright and cold. We were led into the outer gate of the prison. It was very old prison, and there was this kind of dusty outer garden. And then there was a kind of intersection with buildings that were in lockdown. A few days, it may have been the day or two. before the news spread of several al-Qaeda prisoners that had been were being taken to Pakistan inside a vehicle and they overpowered their guards, murdered them, and had escaped. So the atmosphere was quite murderous.

John, his translator, a few others were brought into the outer courtyard of the prison. They were told the prisoners would be shackled. And there they were. No restraints. Standing there. It was these two prisoners. Some of the guards stood up and formed a circle around John Lee and the two men. And, you know, I didn't trust the circumstance.

I didn't trust the guards to be fully on their game. And I also had to contend with Jack Adema, the American, the mercenary, because he was with you. He was with me. He was very belligerent. As a journalist in Afghanistan, it was necessary to have protection. And John Lee Anderson's protection at this time, happened to be this infamous American bounty hunter. Jack Edema, self-styled American soldier of fortune in Afghanistan.

This was a guy who was eventually arrested by the Afghan government for running his own prison. A private prison in his house where he tortured people. So John Lee would be trying to ask questions to the prisoners. Meanwhile, I had Jack who would periodically interrupt me and say bellicose things to them, you know. He'd shout about it. September 11th, tell them America was coming to get them.

And I had to hold him back and tell him to calm down a few times. But in any case, the game was on. We just started talking. One of the guys was in his 20s, short, stocky, big black beard. He was from Kuwait. He was very watchful of me. He had a story about being there to build water, you know, to do charity on behalf of the Muslim people.

and I found him quite unsettling because he kept edging towards me. And by the end of the encounter, we'd move several feet. Huh. That's kind of menacing. Yeah. The other fellow,

darker, thinner, as I recall, he had a scraggly beard. He wore a gray Pakul pork pie cap, a camouflage jacket, U.S. combat boots. But where Fais, the Kuwaiti, was very vigilant and watchful, he was kind of in his own head.

He had just a very neutral, matter-of-fact, fatalistic, I guess, presence. This guy was from Casablanca Morocco. His name was Nasur Abdul Latif. He, you know, began by telling me. Before I tell you what Abdul Latif actually said to John Lee Anderson, I got to preface it by saying how extraordinary this interview is. John Lee asks basically every question I would have asked had I been there that day. And he recorded the answers and published them soon after without ever having to get anything declassified by the U.S. government or spun by a defense attorney.

As a journalist interested in this guy's story, it's a pretty remarkable, and I would argue, trustworthy snapshot at a pivotal moment in his story, potentially even a moment before his testimony was tainted by the kind of torture he would later get at Guantanamo. He did not speak any English. He, you know, began by telling me that he was Moroccan. He had been here and there. He'd somehow ended up in Afghanistan because he was attracted by its strict Islamic rule and because there were Maulavi, there were Islamic scholars there, but that he hadn't gone there to fight.

But then when the war had come, he'd found himself and essentially caught up in it. As an aside, I should say, this is pretty much Shelby's story of what Abdul-Ladif was doing in Afghanistan, that he was there studying, praying, helping people. And so I said, well, so what were the circumstances when you were caught? By then, was he carrying, were you carrying a gun? And he said, candidly, yes, I was. And at a certain point, it was as if he had decided to just tell the truth. and he just said

by the time the Americans came I wanted to fight them and I was fighting for jihad and that when the country was attacked he happily and full-heartedly fought against the foreign invaders and you know I felt that I was at least talking to someone

who had the the courage or the courtesy to be honest Was he saying this kind of stuff proudly? He was very matter of fact. I remember, I seemed to recall him just standing there and being kind of not exactly absent. He had a, I don't want to say, a kind of faraway look in his eye, but he had, I had the impression I was with a kind of true believer. Latif was a man who's notion.

of the jihad came from the book, and I didn't feel that he was, that he looked at me with hatred. It was an interesting moment. You know, I felt that he was being honest, and therefore I kind of appreciated it. Huh. John Lee Anderson wrote about this encounter in his book,

The Lion's Grave Dispatches from Afghanistan. I asked him to read parts of that book, and this is how that meeting with Abdul Latif Nasser came to an end. I asked if either of them had seen Osama bin Laden. Fais Muhammad Ahmed said no, but Nasir Abdel-Latif said that he had. He was in Torabura for a long time and he was receiving a lot of visitors. Osama bin Laden told us, believe in us, believe in Allah, believe in me, in this jihad, we will win in the end. Nasir Abdel-Latif stared at me directly with his pale brown eyes.

We did not come here to fight Afghans. We came here to fight Americans. And we will keep fighting until we destroy them totally. Fah. It's pretty bad. Probably the most dependable evidence I've come across. And it's also the most damning evidence I've come across. There is this New Yorker journalist John Lee Anderson.

Do you know what I'm talking about? When I read John Lee's passage to Shelby, we did not come here to fight Afghans, we came here to fight Americans, and we will keep fighting until we destroy them totally. I've read that, yeah. The truth is, I've not discussed the existence of the interview or its publication in a book with Abdel-Latif. So I suppose I can't comment on that. Yeah. Okay. She said she couldn't comment, of course.

But. Well, to be honest, I suppose I can tell you what I thought of it when I first read it. Sure. It's scary as hell. Yeah. Pretty scary. Yeah. Especially the description of his eyes.

But she says that is not the guy she knows and has been representing for four years. Nah, I don't really see that. I don't really see you staring at someone like that. And saying that in such a menacing manner, even though I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the accounting of what was said, I do tend to doubt information that was taken in the context of, so for example, if Abdul-Lif the day prior were beaten by Afghan forces. And to be honest, she basically said you'd be a. idiot to trust anything that anyone said in the context of that prison. Consider his circumstances. He was most likely being tortured by Northern Alliance soldiers who were paid like mercenaries to deliver Al-Qaeda soldiers to Americans, and their basic MO was to pick people up, sometimes at

random, and torture them until they admitted to be aligned with Osama bin Laden. The only way to stop the torture, admit guilt. The soldiers were standing right there. there. If he didn't say what he said, what do you think would have happened? That made sense to me. Until I thought about that other guy right next to him, who said he was doing charity work. Why didn't that guy feel the same pressure? But then I heard another angle on this from the journalist Kathy Scott Clark. She said, let's just take him at his word. Presume he meant everything that he said. Put yourself in his combat boots and imagine why he might have felt that way. I mean, he has seen many days of pounding with J-Dams and huge aerial bombardment on that

mountain, which decimated the troops fighting up there. I mean, I've interviewed people who have been released from Gran Tannamo, including a doctor, and he was forced to do amputations and all sorts of horrible operations without any anesthetic, just using a knife. So obviously if NASA was there and witnessed all of that. And also what you have to realize by that stage is that there have been some pretty horrific massacres of innocent wives and children of Al-Qaeda operatives. A group of women and children from Al-Qaeda families were fleeing from Kandahar to a place called Panchway, which is southwest of Kandahar. They were in a kind of convoy of vehicles and two American helicopters.

followed them and all these women and children got blown to bits. As for Abdul-Latif himself, according to government documents, he flees the fighting. And as he does, this is actually from the U.S. government account, U.S. helicopters come and shoot 35 of the guys he's running away with, as they're running away, including one of his close friends. That was about a week before this interview. So if that's all true, makes total sense he would hate America and say so. But here's the thing that Americans should be able to get behind more than anyone from any other country.

You're allowed to say you hate America. It's not a crime to say things. It's a crime to do things. In the interview with John Lee Anderson, he didn't say that he did anything specific or criminal. The U.S. combat boots he was wearing? no Americans died at Toribora. Supposedly, you can pick those up at any market. Soon after this jailhouse interview,

Abdullah Dif Nasser would be transferred to American custody. And that precise moment is when his story becomes our story. Independent of what you think he did or didn't do, he got sent to a place where he got treated as if he did it all. So we have to ask, as Americans. Does what he did to us, whatever that is, justify what we ended up doing to him?

That's where we're headed next. Guantanamo Bay. This episode was produced by Annie McEwen, with Sara Kari, Susie Lechtenberg, and me, Latif Nasser. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly and Margot Williams. Editing by Jad Abumrod and Soren Wheeler. We had helped from Neil Deneyha, Audrey,

Quinn and Kelly Prime. Original music by Jad Abumrad, Alex Overington, Annie McEwen, and Amino Belliani. Tune in next week when we go to the upside down. Hi, this is Joanna, and I'm calling from the beautiful Lubek in Germany. Radio Lab is created by Chad Abumroud with Robert Coler, and produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Our staff include

Sam and Adler Becca Bressler Rachel Cusick David Giebel Bethel Haptee Tracy Hunt Matt Kieltee Annie McGuwen

Latif Nassah Sarah Quarry Arian Wack Pat Walters and Molly Webster With help from Shima Oliai W. Harry Fortuna

Sarah Sandbach Melissa O'Donnell Tatt Davis and Russell Gregg Our fact checker is Michelle Harris Thank you.