On the morning of June 19, Idema began the series of raids that would be the last of his Afghan campaign, a roundup of the key figures who Idema believed were behind the plot to bomb the promise of Afghan political stability to kingdom come. A few days later, in an interview with Stuff, Idema was prepared to declare victory. "I got them all, I got all the taxi bombers, the bombs, the explosives and the plans," he said. Of the 14 men initially captured in the raids, Idema decided to detain eight of them, convinced that they were the men he had been seeking.
It is hardly a surprise that Idema - ever the self-promoter - documented the dramatic raids with the aid of Caraballo's camera. Later, Tiffany showed the tape of the raid to Stuff magazine. The magazine described the contents this way:
"A half-dozen bearded men, most of them young, lean, their heads bare cowered at the edge of a rocky road to nowhere. Squinting against a blistering Afghan sun, they seemed puzzled, frightened even, as the wild man with the black sunglasses, the combat vest and the American flag on his sleeve barked incomprehensible orders at them.
"Up! Get your hands up or I'll blow your...head off," the wild man shouted as he pointed his short-barreled assault rifle at a spot somewhere between a captive's nose and his eyes. From just over the man's shoulder, an Afghan translator repeated this man's directives, though there was a little less venom in his voice. The captives got the point, even without the translation. Slowly, tentatively, they raised their arms over their head.
For the moment, the wild man was satisfied.
None of the prisoners looked like trouble right then, but "Jack" Idema was convinced that among these prisoners was a man whom he'd been tracking for months, a man whom the FBI had been trying to locate for five months and who, according to Idema's own intelligence reports, was a dangerous terrorist with links to the former Taliban regime, Al Qaeda, and renegade Afghan warlord Gulbideen Hekmatyar.
Idema was certain that the men he had captured -- and those he was about to in a series of raids that would continue for the next 36 hours -- were instrumental in a plot to shake the fledgling Afghan government by planting bombs on airplanes and buses, and in apartments, offices, and taxis. Their goal, Idema wrote in his intelligence report, was "to assassinate high-ranking members of the Afghan interim government...to cause instability and ultimately civil war to make room for the al-Qaida (sic) backed Hezb-I-Islami party and insure that Hekmatyar could seize the presidency."
Days earlier, in an interview with Stuff, Idema had been even less circumspect in describing the danger he believed his quarry posed. "You mark my words," he said. "In 100 days, 100 days from today, bombs are gonna start going off like...wildfires here."
email
print
default
increase
decrease
