Gray Work: Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy

414 Pages·2015·6.45 MB·English

by  Jamie Smith

Author’s Note
I wish to dedicate this book to my God and Savior Jesus Christ, without whom
I’d be lost; to my family, who have been my ever-present rock; and to those who
fight for our country, both military and civilian—your sacrifice cannot be
appreciated, nor rewarded enough. To the fine men and women of SCG, LLC
who worked tirelessly in the face of much adversity, but who always gave 100
percent. Finally, to Morgan, Cole, and Mallory, I hope this helps you understand
why your dad was gone so much, missed so many birthdays and special times. I
love you . . . to pieces.
Everything in this book is my opinion or recollection. I have changed many of
the names, mainly to protect sources and the identities of people who are still
working dangerous jobs in dangerous parts of the world. In a few instances, I
have also compressed the timeline of the events described or created a composite
character. Honoring the confidentiality agreement I signed when hired by the
Central Intelligence Agency, and then by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I
submitted the manuscript for their review and have removed information
considered classified. Both the FBI and CIA Publication Review Boards were
courteous in their review process. The CIA has required that I—as is required of
every former employee—include this disclaimer:
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are my own and do not
reflect in any way the official position or views of the CIA or any other U.S.
Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or
implying U.S. Government authentication of information or Agency
endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA
to prevent the disclosure of classified information.
—Jamie Smith
February 2015
Epigraph
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the
dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity:
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act
their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
Contents
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Prologue
I The Rise of the Rebels

CHAPTER 1 Libya
CHAPTER 2 Meeting Ambassadors
CHAPTER 3 Cairo
CHAPTER 4 Travel to Benghazi
CHAPTER 5 Meeting the Rebels
CHAPTER 6 How Much Is This Going to Cost Us?
CHAPTER 7 Spying on the State Department?
CHAPTER 8 Escaping Saddam
CHAPTER 9 Plan B
CHAPTER 10 To the Shores of Tripoli
II The Fall of a Dictator
CHAPTER 11 Inside the Militia
CHAPTER 12 Shoot ’Em in the Teeth While They Sleep
CHAPTER 13 Building a Spy: The Foundations
CHAPTER 14 The Battle for Sirte
CHAPTER 15 Dogs, Cans, and Dead Snipers
CHAPTER 16 Creating an Operator
CHAPTER 17 Old Meat in the Locker
Photographic Insert
III Afghanistan
CHAPTER 18 Blackwater
CHAPTER 19 Going to War
CHAPTER 20 Eight Miles to Go
CHAPTER 21 “Loading!”
CHAPTER 22 Bad Contractors
IV Syria, Iran, Mali
CHAPTER 23 The Iranian Operation
CHAPTER 24 Rendition
CHAPTER 25 Syria
CHAPTER 26 Targeted Killing
CHAPTER 27 MANPAD + Bad Guy + Jet = Bad Day
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Glossary

About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Last week of Ramadan, August 2011
Tripoli, Libya
IN THE DARK HOURS OF THE EARLY MORNING, my cell buzzed and a thin voice
gave me the news: bad guys with guns were heading our way. This was a city at
war and the thugs who kept Muammar Qadhafi in power were savages. But like
hyenas, they were most dangerous when desperate and cornered. For days I’d
carefully dodged Qadhafi’s hit teams from the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya as they
stepped up their hunt for the rebels. I’d kept one step ahead of them at each turn.
But now, somehow, overnight, they’d found me.
I got up from the couch I was sleeping on in the front room of the three-story
concrete villa and grabbed my rifle—an AK-47. As far as I could tell, I was the
only American operator in this part of Libya. Qadhafi’s men were hunting the
rebels, the opposition. It was going to be a long, hot night.
“Sumo, wake up.” The young Asian, a twenty-something freelance
photographer, was snoring just a few feet from me on another couch. I’d met
him a few days earlier at the docks in Malta as I’d waited to board the old
Korean-run, Filipino-crewed, Libyan-flagged fishing boat that brought us into
this war-torn nation. It was his first time in this region, and he thought I worked
for a news agency. I doubted his chances of surviving this war zone alone, so I
let him tag along; I figured I could pawn him off to a real news crew at the first
opportunity.
“We’re out of here in two minutes,” I said, pulling the shoulder strap of my
tan Kifaru Tailgunner pack over my head and swinging it around to my front.
Weighing nearly twelve pounds and about the size of a large football, it held my
essentials: a loaded pistol given to me when I came ashore along with three spare
mags of ammo, four loaded rifle magazines—also a gift upon arrival—a PVS-
14-3 night vision monocular, a Medford TS-1 fixed-blade knife, a Garmin
Oregon 400t GPS, and a Foretrex 401 GPS for a backup. There was a Ranger
lensatic compass, signal mirror, Quest protein bars, gunshot kit, Thuraya
satphone, laminated map, Cipro antibiotics, Imodium, infrared strobe, Velcro
U.S. flag patch, passport, five grand in U.S. cash, extra batteries for everything,
and most important, a laminated copy of two letters giving me authorization for
being here.
Then I shouldered my Kifaru AG-1 main pack with everything else I brought
in, including a compact sleeping bag, a change of clothes, foldout solar panel to
charge my electronics, a Panasonic Toughbook computer, spare satphone
antenna, more batteries for everything, CamelBak water purification bottle
system, a dark brown Catoma one-man shelter, more protein bars, a larger first-
aid kit, and other odds and ends. I put the big fifty-pound pack on last, just in
case I had to ditch it. That way I’d still have the smaller bag—the Tailgunner
with my essentials for survival—hooked to my body.
I pulled the mag out from my AK-47 to make sure it was topped off, then
hooked it back into the rifle, tugged on it to make sure it was seated, and then
chambered a round. Last thing I wanted was to have my magazine fall out of my
gun. It was a training habit from decades on firing ranges, but it was important.
After getting my gear ready and wiping the cobwebs from my brain, I formed a
loose plan that revolved around one concept—get the crap out of here. I woke
the rest of our party: Sleepy—a former Libyan ambassador who’d defected and
who’d brought me to this place; Hakin, his good friend who owned the house we
were visiting; and the boy—his preteen son.
Sleepy opened his eyes wide from a deep sleep, then squinted, recoiling at
the sound of my voice as if stung by a wasp. “Mr. Jamie, what is going on?”
“Kamel called. Qadhafi’s men are heading here right now. They know you
and I are here, and they also think our host is General Hakim.” The man whose
villa we were borrowing, Mr. Hakin, apparently had a name similar to that of a
rebel leader. The caller, Kamel, was a significant leader in the Misrata rebellion.
He was good at fund-raising, and coordinating the influx of men and weapons.
He apparently also had really strong connections into the intel networks in
Tripoli. If we didn’t die tonight, I’d be happily adding him to the list of people to
whom I owed my life.
We didn’t have time to screw around. I didn’t know when Kamel’s team had
intercepted the call or how far away the hit team might even be. Our only
security right now was speed—just get out of here.
“Meet me at the front of the house and be ready to leave in two minutes.”
Tripoli was exploding, but my company’s operation in Libya was shaping
up. We had a forward-staging base in Malta, manned by one of our support
staffers, and an Operations Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, run by Odell
International. My partner, D, and I had been in and out of the country, collecting
critical information on the state of the insurrection and pushing it back to
Washington, D.C. We had estimates of the strength of the rebel brigades, which
were set up to help secure the country, the extent of radical Islamist penetrations
of the insurgency and those brigades, the locations and destinations of shipments
of deadly surface-to-air missiles (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, called
MANPADS), and anything else that seemed germane. We’d been responding to
the Department of Defense and other RFIs (or requests for information) about
certain people and places. When it was all wrapped up, I knew I’d have to brief
Congresswoman Myrick, the Anti-Terrorism Caucus, and others on what we
found. But first, I had to get out of Libya alive, and I wasn’t eager to make
another run into the crazy streets, where a confrontation could easily leave me
dead and bleeding out.
THE PREVIOUS DAY AROUND lunchtime, I was in the courtyard trying to get a
satphone signal to send a SITREP (situation report) back to our Ops Center
when a loud crack ripped the air, and then another. Within seconds, Hakin’s
phone started playing a ridiculous ringtone on the highest volume setting and he
announced that there was a sniper in our neighborhood, as if the shots weren’t
evidence enough.
Hakin, an out-of-shape, middle-aged businessman with a growing paunch
before the war, now ran upstairs and came back with his AK-47 and two
magazines. Then he ran out the front door. This is the way people get killed, I
remember thinking.
Hakin lived in one of the ritziest areas of the city—it reminded me of the
west side of Houston—but it was as dangerous as the worst gang turf in
Southern California. The dictator’s sons had homes nestled among the tree-lined
boulevards that sat between Gergarish Road and Gorji Street, just a few blocks
from the psychiatric hospital. How fitting that Hakin, who had no formal training
in fighting, wanted to go hunting snipers. He belonged in that asylum, I half
joked to myself.
“They say it’s a single shooter. He’s up a few blocks that way,” Hakin said,
pointing toward the rear of his house in his broken English. I wasn’t here to hunt
snipers; my job was to relay information to D.C., not go on a foot patrol with a
guy who barely knew how to work his rifle. But I needed to keep building trust
with these people, and of course Hakin had opened his home to me, a port in a
dangerous storm. Hospitality is an ancient sacrament in Muslim countries. I
cursed under my breath as I pulled on my Oakleys, shouldered my rifle, checked
the mag and chamber, and nodded to Hakin, saying, “Yah-la serbi”—“Go . . .
quickly.”
Leaving the house, we circled left and moved low along a wall toward the
street corner. I dropped prone to the concrete and crawled to the edge, poking
my eyeball around and studying the empty, tree-lined street. But for a few cars,
rocks, and trash, there was nothing really to see.
Hakin’s phone rang again, startling both of us. I yanked my head back from
the corner, yell-whispering at him to end that noise. Junk like that we called a
“noise ND,” short for negligent discharge. Have an ND, whether with a gun,
flashlight, phone, or radio, and you direct the enemy to your position from the
noise or light—and you never want to do that. It makes everyone around you
hate you. “Hakin! Shut that thing off before you get us shot! Just take a deep
breath,” I told him as he got off the phone; he removed his wire-rimmed glasses
and wiped the sweat with his sleeve as it dripped down into his now saucer-size
eyes.
“The sniper is in Qadhafi’s son’s house on the roof. It is not far from here,”
he whispered.
The home of Qadhafi’s heir-apparent was abandoned now. It had become a
place for squatters and now, a sniper. I couldn’t see it from my position, but
Hakin seemed to have a clear line of sight from his. Here’s a hint: if you can see
the enemy, he most likely can see you, too.
Another pair of shots came from the house—it sounded like the same
weapon as before, a high-powered rifle firing supersonic ammo. But I noticed
that each shot produced a single report. If he’d been aiming in our direction there
would have been two—the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier,
followed by the muzzle discharge a second or so later. This guy was shooting
anything that moved, but we weren’t in his sights right now. We had to stay out
of view of that house.
Long ago I learned the basic rubric for shooting and moving under fire. It
was motion, distance, angles, cover, and concealment, MDACC for short. First,
we needed to keep moving, because it’s harder to hit a moving target. Our
direction was important, too: we needed to move at an angle to the shooter, not
on a straight line, which was far easier to hit. Lastly, Hakin and I also needed to