BOOK REVIEW: RACE AGAINST TERROR: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War
By Jake Tapper / Atria Books
Reviewed by: Joe Zacks
The Reviewer — Joe Zacks is the Deputy Assistant Director of the CIA for Counterterrorism. He has previously served as the Agency’s Chief Learning Officer and the CIA’s Chief of Operations for Counterterrorism. He has served a number of times as a Chief of Station to include one of CIA’s flagship stations in South Asia. Prior to joining the CIA, Joe served a full career of over 21 years as an officer in the U.S. Army.
REVIEW — As I end over 42 years of serving in the national security arena, most recently at the helm of CIA’s Counterterrorism Mission Center, I found Jake Tapper’s Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War an inspiring read. Tapper weaves a skillfully crafted story that is less about hunting terrorists than about the rule of law and judicial procedure. He depicts the tenaciousness of federal prosecutors in a six-year odyssey to bring an al Qaeda terrorist to justice. The story also serves as a reminder that our government will vigorously pursue the murderers of its citizens, regardless of the passage of time.
The book opens with the serendipitous June 2011 capture by the Italian authorities of an al Qaeda terrorist, Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, also known as Spin Ghul. This murderer turns himself in to the Italian authorities during a sea passage from north Africa to Italy and confesses to being an unrepentant al Qaeda operative who has murdered Americans. Upon Spin Ghul’s arrest, two federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York, Dave Bitkower and Shreve Ariail (an acquaintance of mine) are dispatched to Italy to determine the veracity of Spin Ghul’s case. Ultimately the prosecutors convince the Italian authorities that Spin Ghul’s confession of being an al Qaeda associate is credible and that justice would be best served by his extradition to the United States. The Italians agree on the conditions that he is tried in a civilian court (vice military tribunal) and is not subject to the death penalty.
With this prelude, Tapper unfurls a tale that places Spin Ghul at the scene of an attack against U.S. troops on April 25, 2003, in the Shkin region of Afghanistan. This ambush resulted in the murder of Private First Class Jerod Dennis and Airman First Class Ray Losano as well as the injury of several other U.S. military. Tapper captures the life stories of Dennis, Losano and other unit members—portraying how each of them ended up in the military and in the far away post of Shkin. Having visited Shkin in 2005, I found Tapper’s portrayal of this desolate outpost nestled along the Pakistan border and subject to regular al Qaeda and militant assault was colorful and exact. In addition to participating in the 2003 attack against the U.S. military, Spin Ghul actively plotted and conspired to bomb the U.S. embassy in Nigeria.
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The bulk of the book is a mix of detective story and legal drama. In a highly readable manner, Tapper demonstrates how a federal legal case against a foreign terrorist is built. In the Spin Ghul case, he illustrates the criticality and difficulty of amassing evidence against Spin Ghul for a crime committed in a distant land fourteen years before the trial. Tapper demonstrates how, despite an abundance of challenges, federal prosecutors followed up on every clue via exhaustively interviewing witnesses and obtaining physical evidence.
Tapper is also artful in portraying Spin Ghul. He explains how this African who grew up in Saudi Arabia became enamored with al Qaeda and traveled to Afghanistan shortly before 9/11 to train at al Qaeda camps; there he developed relations with its second-tier leadership. Tapper relates Spin Ghul’s continuous psychopathic determination to kill Americans long after his arrest. Given his pathological behavior and the legal rights afforded defendants in U.S. courts, Spin Ghul’s sanity was adjudicated in the run up to his trial, and he was deemed competent to stand trial.
The book also delves into the political debates during the Obama administration about the legality of the Guantanamo Bay military commissions and the efficacy of trying in U.S. courts foreign terrorists who killed American combatants. Trying Spin Ghul in federal court was risky. There was only one precedent for this, and it did not end well for the prosecution. In the end, regardless of the U.S. political dimensions of this decision, the Italians would almost certainly not have extradited Spin Ghul for trial at Guantanamo.
Tapper’s book is the story of a uniquely American and maybe Western commitment to the rule of law. Regardless of how heinous Spin Ghul’s crimes were and his being an unremorseful and diehard al Qaeda operative, once he entered the federal legal system, his rights were preserved and enforced. The U.S. government took close to six years to convict him in court and bring justice to the families of those whom he murdered. The U.S. legal system worked, and justice was ultimately served. This clearly distinguishes us from al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hizbollah, and the myriad other terrorist groups that do not believe in the rule of law. These groups only know how to murder their adversaries and innocent civilians. Civilized societies—with the United States at its forefront—believe in the rights of human beings and ensure that, when justice needs to be served, it is done on the basis of rules and evidence and a respect for the defendant’s rights. Tapper draws out complexity of the U.S. court system, and this theme can be frustrating at times, but the manner in which Spin Ghul was meted justice made me proud to be an American and a longtime counterterrorism warrior.
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