There are certain set pieces in the great game of espionage. One is to convince an adversarial intelligence agency that one of their operatives is a double agent. If you discover this agent is travelling to Copenhagen twice next year you can make sure that someone withdraws large sums of money in his name on the days he is visiting. The was a common operation used against the KGB during the Cold War.
Another set piece is to introduce a spy into a network. To do this you need to create a ‘legacy’. The operative needs a history, and he needs credibility, so that he will be accepted by the targets. Spy agencies can spend years creating a legacy before the operative is introduced.
We can (most likely) see this process in the case of Abdallah Tabarak. Abdallah Tabarak is a Moroccan that purportedly worked as a bodyguard for Usama bin-Laden. He was first introduced to the general public by Peter Finn of the Washington Post on January 21st, 2003.
With U.S. forces closing in on him during the battle of Tora Bora in late 2001, Osama bin Laden employed a simple feint against sophisticated U.S. spy technology to vanish into the mountains that led to Pakistan and sanctuary, according to senior Moroccan officials.
A Moroccan who was one of bin Laden’s longtime bodyguards took possession of the al Qaeda leader’s satellite phone on the assumption that U.S. intelligence agencies were monitoring it to get a fix on their position, said the officials, who have interviewed the bodyguard, Abdallah Tabarak.
Tabarak moved away from bin Laden and his entourage as they fled; he continued to use the phone in an effort to divert the Americans and allow bin Laden to escape. Tabarak was captured at Tora Bora in possession of the phone, officials said.
“He agreed to be captured or die,” a Moroccan official said of Tabarak. “That’s the level of his fanaticism for bin Laden. It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was enough. There is a saying: ‘Where there is a frog, the serpent is not far away.’ “
More than a year later, Tabarak, 43, has established himself as the “emir” or camp leader of the more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to senior officials here who have visited the military compound twice to interview Moroccan citizens.
In my opinion, this story is false. It is well known and widely reported that Usama bin-Laden stopped using his mobile phone back in 1998. Former CIA operative Gary Berntsen reports in his new book, Jawbreaker, that bin-Laden was using a basic children’s walkie talkie at Tora Bora. The idea that bin Laden was able to trick our intelligence agencies into tracking Tabarak using bin-Laden’s cell phone is therefore highly unlikely.
It is also highly unlikely that we would release the man that tricked us and allowed bin-Laden to escape. This morning the Washington Post wonders the same thing in an article entitled Al Qaeda Detainee’s Mysterious Release. ….
Tabarak was captured and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was classified as such a high-value prisoner that the Pentagon repeatedly denied requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to see him. Then, after spending almost three years at the base, he was suddenly released.
Today, the al Qaeda loyalist known locally as the “emir” of Guantanamo walks the streets of his old neighborhood near Casablanca, more or less a free man. In a decision that neither the Pentagon nor Moroccan officials will explain publicly, Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004 and released from police custody four months later.
It can’t be said that Tabarak was released for lack of evidence, at least not if the story about his abetting bin-Laden’s escape is true. And he certainly wasn’t released for good behavior.
Tabarak, 43, has established himself as the “emir” or camp leader of the more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to senior officials here who have visited the military compound twice to interview Moroccan citizens.
Some of the prisoners, by symbolically holding daylong fasts on the orders of Tabarak, have maintained some semblance of a command structure in defiance of U.S. attempts to isolate and break them, Moroccan officials said.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that there has been a series of one-day fasts by prisoners at the base and that a number of people have emerged as leaders among the prisoners. But they have not publicly identified Tabarak. U.S. policy is to neither confirm nor deny the presence of specific individuals being held at Guantanamo Bay.
Tabarak is now facing charges in Morocco:
…Tabarak, 50, still faces minor criminal offenses in Rabat, the capital, such as passport forgery and conspiracy. But his attorney predicts that it’s only a matter of time before the case is dropped and all allegations of terrorist activities are dismissed.
The attorney, Abdelfattah Zahrach, said his client’s importance as an al Qaeda figure has been exaggerated, although he acknowledged that Tabarak knew bin Laden and worked for one of his companies.
“He was in bin Laden’s environment, but he didn’t play an operational role,” Zahrach said. “Do you think that if he was really the bodyguard of bin Laden that the Americans would have let him come back to Morocco?”
The answer to that question is obvious. No. No, I do not think we would have released Tabarak if he were really bin-Laden’s bodyguard, and certainly not if he abetted bin-Laden’s escape.
According to Moroccan and other foreign intelligence officials, Tabarak sacrificed himself so the others could escape. He took bin Laden’s satellite phone, which the al Qaeda leader apparently assumed was being tracked by U.S. spy technology, and walked toward the Pakistani border as the al Qaeda leadership fled in the opposite direction. The ruse worked, although Tabarak and others were captured.
“I escaped as part of a group that included mostly Saudis and Yemenis towards Pakistan, until we were arrested by Pakistani authorities at a border crossing point and then afterwards handed over to American authorities,” he told Moroccan interrogators in August 2004.
Zahrach, Tabarak’s attorney, confirmed that his client was caught near the border and handed over to the U.S. military. But he denied Tabarak helped bin Laden escape from Tora Bora. He dismissed the interrogation reports as forgeries. He said Moroccan officials have no evidence for their allegations but are too embarrassed to admit it.
“They have to charge him with something in Morocco to prevent him from talking,” Zahrach said. “They have to keep him tied up in court and keep him under pressure.”
I submit that the Moroccans are not too embarrassed to admit it. I submit they are merely deactivating a spy who has served his purpose.
