The Salt Lake Tribune December 26, 2004
Newest twist in Hassoun case raises eyebrows
Alleged Iraq deserter: When he vanished, he had been working on counterintelligence operations
By Robert Gehrke
WASHINGTON - The case of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, facing life in prison on a desertion charge, grew even more baffling last week when it was revealed that he had been aiding counterintelligence operations when he vanished from his Iraq base.
Hassoun, who had been portrayed as a truck driver in his unit's motor pool, was also working as an Arabic translator for Human Intelligence Exploitation Team-9, one of many small groups of Marines whose job it is to interrogate prisoners, develop sources among the Iraqi civilians and sniff out threats to the unit.
"They're the ones asking the questions when they've got them all lined up and the women and children are screaming and the shock value of having a bunch of soldiers with weapons in your living room has not worn off," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Virginia-based defense and intelligence think tank.
Hassoun's involvement in intelligence operations adds new intrigue to his disappearance, which has resulted in the desertion charge and an ongoing investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Services into what happened after he allegedly left his base near Fallujah in June.
Acting as a HET translator would have put Hassoun on the front lines of the unit's counter-espionage, counterterrorism, interrogation and intelligence collection, doing much of the work face-to-face in dangerous parts of Iraq, although he didn't have a security clearance at the time because he was not an American citizen when he joined the Corps.
The operations and information collected by the HET teams are classified, and the Corps would only discuss the Lebanon-born Hassoun's involvement in general terms.
"The translator responsibility would be doing normal operations, out in the town, doing interrogations," said Maj. Matt Morgan, spokesman for the 4th Marine Expeditionary Force, anti-terrorism unit. "Anything that might require the language skills is something he would be involved in."
Hassoun's role on the team was disclosed Tuesday, moments before an intelligence officer in HET-9 was scheduled to testify at Hassoun's pretrial hearing at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The testimony was scuttled at the last minute when Hassoun decided to seek a civilian counsel rather than rely on his Corps-appointed lawyers.
Generally, HET teams in Iraq have been credited with uncovering huge weapons caches, helping to capture prominent Ba'ath party officials and anti-American forces, neutralizing groups trying to incite violence against American troops and foiling potential bombings.
On Saturday, the Marine Corps announced intelligence collected from Iraqi civilians aided in the apprehension earlier this month of two cell leaders of the Harun terrorist network, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The group is suspected of executing 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen, detonating numerous improvised explosive devices and murdering Iraqi civilians.
"Local citizens are providing useful, detailed information regarding these terrorists," the Corps said in a news release. "This information provided by the citizens of Ar Ramadi has led to the capture of several members of this group since early December."
The HET teams generally consist of four or five Marines under the guidance of a trained counterintelligence officer and accompanied by translators like Hassoun when necessary.
They sprung up after the last Gulf War, when the Corps, unhappy with the intelligence it had received, sought to beef up its own collection system by putting intelligence assets in every expeditionary unit.
"They grow their hair long and blend in" with the civilian population, Morgan said. "It's very difficult for an American to go out and absolutely blend in, but [the HET team] job is not to create a covert identity and be presented as being Iraqi. The job is to not be as identifiable."
Pike said that because of the current climate in Iraq, intelligence-gathering today probably focuses more on prisoner interrogation, conducting hot-pursuit questioning after "nighttime door-kicking operations," identifying captives with potentially useful information, and trying to piece together networks of anti-American leadership and forces.
"At times you could aspire to get a feel for the neighborhood just by walking around and chatting people up. But I think under prevailing conditions that would be a good way to get kidnapped," he said.
The fact that Hassoun was translating for one of the small teams, Pike said, "renders perfectly plausible the notion he was kidnapped."
Hassoun vanished from Camp Fallujah in the Al Anbar province of Iraq on June 20. He was initially categorized as a deserter, but his status was changed to captured after grainy video surfaced a week later showing him blindfolded, with a sword wielded above his head.
On July 3, a militant group Web site claimed that Hassoun had been beheaded. But the group that purportedly kidnapped Hassoun said the reports were false and Hassoun surfaced in Beirut, Lebanon, on July 8 and was taken to the U.S. Embassy.
Hassoun's only statement about the episode came in July, when he had arrived back in the United States. He denied deserting his post, maintaining he was captured and held against his will.
He has been charged with desertion and theft of his service weapon and a Humvee. If convicted at a military court-martial, he could be sentenced to up to life in prison.
Additional details are likely to emerge next month, when Hassoun's pretrial hearing reconvenes with testimony expected from nine witnesses, including Marines from the HET team. Their identities will be kept secret because of security considerations.
The HET teams have been praised by the Corps for their effectiveness.
But in a report this week, Anthony Cordesman, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Defense Department official, said the military generally failed to develop Iraqi assistance in its intelligence gathering, which has limited the information available and impaired anti-insurgency efforts.
"Rather than seeing the need for effective Iraqi intelligence collection and analysis - and to rely on Iraqis for the lack of area and language skills and understanding of local political and tactical conditions - the U.S. tried to create a network of informers and local contacts and carry out analysis on its own," Cordesman wrote.
"The U.S. simply does not have the capability in terms of expertise and access to suddenly improvise a largely autonomous [human intelligence] effort as a substitute for partnership with an intelligence organization run by local allies," he said.
The tactics exercised by the Marine interrogators have also been called into question. Earlier this year, a group of Marine reservists were charged in the death of a Ba'ath Party member suspected of having participated in the assault on Pfc. Jessica Lynch's convoy early in the war.
The reservists at Camp Whitehorse near Nasiryah said they were told by HET interrogators to soften up the prisoner by making him stand 50 minutes of each hour for up to 10 hours at a time.
A HET sergeant denied giving the instructions.
Nagem Sadoon Hatab, 52, was found dead several hours after being dragged from his cell by his neck, naked and covered in excrement, when he refused to stand.
Donald Rehkopf, an attorney defending one of the reservists, said it wasn't easy uncovering information on the HET teams, but they appear to operate with little accountability or supervision.
They were largely left to their own devices, he said.
Copyright © 2004 The Salt Lake Tribune
