During training for my present job, I had been particularly
struck by a foundation document of tradecraft, “The Role of
Self- Deception in Prediction Failures.” It argues that Americans are
especially prone to self- deception and that our ability to fool ourselves
is greater than the ability of others to fool us. History shows plenty of
examples, but it’s my own that’s made me understand the author’s
point. Am I myself more gullible than other Americans? Perhaps these
are the very qualities I was recruited for: gullibility, and the rigidity of
my belief in pragmatism—for I am determined not to let ideology,
whether of love or patriotism, get the better of me again.
And when did the gullibility principle begin to work on me?
Maybe not until I was on the plane to Marrakech, or even when I got the assignment
to go there. Am I once again its victim? I still don’t know,
even now, how much of what happened had been orchestrated, how
much was the collusion of unforeseen events.
But I should explain how I came to be involved in all this. I’m
Lulu Sawyer—not my christened name, but it is now Lulu even in
company records.
In our organization, we have foreign intelligence (FI), counterintelligence
(CI), human intelligence (HUMINT), and communications intelligence
(COMMI); there’s covert, overt, clandestine, and paramilitary,
and passive and aggressive in each category. I am FI/HUMINT/NOC.
NOC means not officially connected to an embassy or government
agency.
“Human intelligence,” said my handler, Sefton Taft, in a regretful
tone—I report to an insensitive and sometimes seemingly not-too friendly
case officer named Taft, who is stationed in Spain. “HUMINT.
It must still be gathered. These Arabs are so backward; things
like electronic surveillance, technical collection—these are useless.
Knowledge is in someone’s head, it’s recorded in the knots of a camel’s
bridle, in certain passages of the Koran. The Russians, God bless
them, at least had radio communications, listening stations of their
own, cell phones we could intercept—those were the days.”
“Human intelligence; an oxymoron,” I remember saying.
HUMINT/FI had a basic mission in Morocco: to gather information
intended to upgrade generally our database on the country, including
information about the flow of money through certain Marrakech
Islamic charities or, more startling, the Europe an clubs and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs). It was the analysis at headquarters that it
was the Moroccan NGOs, directed and mostly funded by foreigners,
that formed the nexus of, or at least an important stage on, the money
trail from Europe and America to various terrorist organizations, via
Moroccan banking. It was important, because we had intelligence that
the Islamists left over from recent crackdowns in Algeria had regrouped
in the Sahara desert and were recruiting and attempting to radicalize
everywhere in North Africa—Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and in
the no- man’s-land of the Western Sahara—and unless they could be
impeded would have a powerful Al- Qaida- like base within easy striking
distance of Eu rope, as the bombings in Spain had shown.
“HUMINT—it makes you long for the old days,” Taft had added.
“Satellite photos, listening devices, hard targets. You’re well- placed,
Lulu. No matter what happens with the boyfriend, you’ll easily find a
way of staying on in Morocco—a healthy, articulate, sociable girl like
you.”
Taft was briefing me: “Huge sums of money change hands in the
souk, intended for jihad, never going near a bank. Who are the bankers?
We think there’s a network involving domestics, car repair guys, people
who interact with Europeans every day. Waiters. We need a lot more
information on them.” It was from Morocco that huge sums of money
were being distributed to radical Middle Eastern organizations and suicide
bombers, and as reparations to their families. Terrorists were being
formed there too—Moroccans had been among the bombers in Casablanca
and Madrid, and were even connected to London. There is evidence
that all of North Africa is home to rising numbers of fanatics.
“Remember,” Taft said, “these people depend on a network of little
shop keepers, forgers, fishermen—sympathizers who can get a false
passport, a train ticket, put them up for a night or a week, help them
cross the water. These are people who won’t themselves be planting
bombs, but who indulge their convictions or ease their consciences by
supporting the bombers. That’s where we need information. Where
are those passports coming from?”
I understood. I would not be Lawrence of Arabia. Mine was a
frankly low- level and not very specific mission; but I was a low- level person
who had happened into a potentially valuable cover, acquiring an
English lover who lived in Morocco. Luckily our corporate ethic does
not include celibacy, and though it was utterly unspoken, I sensed company
backing for recruits who were also passable- looking and had a fair
chance of going to bed with possibly useful men, and the willingness.
Beside this mission, other personal things drew me to the idea of
Morocco—the warm weather, the fascination of a new culture, but
especially my little love affair with Ian Drumm. I’d told my family and
friends I was going to visit a lover in Marrakech, as, of course, I was,
and it was a more-than-perfect cover for my real mission, which I
couldn’t reveal to them or to him. In my first post, I’d been attached
to an international aid agency in Pristina, in Kosovo, where I had met
Ian, and was now being reassigned conveniently near him. To spend a
few months with him at his villa in Marrakech would hardly be work.
I’d never been to North Africa but had always liked travel posters
of the mosques and domes, the salmon walls, the palms and donkeys
and goats, all so evocative of warm sunshine and the melodic calls to
prayer, and a dionysian miasma of goat and incense layered in the air.
Islam drew me and repelled me. My misgivings weren’t sectarian; part
of my apprehensiveness had to do with the paradox that we are apt to
fear most what we most want, in case when we get it, it turn to ashes.
I wanted to succeed professionally—as predicted for the paradigmatic
young person sought by the Agency (though I’m in my thirties)—and
personally, with Ian, for I was kind of stuck on him.