The Daily Presents “Caliphate,” Chapter 8

[0] from the New York Times and the team that brought you the daily.

[1] This is Caliphate.

[2] Can I get you to tell us what date is and what we're up to?

[3] It's Sunday, July 9th.

[4] We slept in what appears to be an abandoned villa here on the outskirts of Western Mosul as we wait for our in bed with the counterterrorism division of the Iraqi security force.

[5] And we were supposed to take off at 8.

[6] We're now sitting in the armored car that they provided for us, but the armored car is not turning on.

[7] And so we have a gaggle of men that are pouring over the hood, trying to figure out how to get this car, this car started.

[8] There's a rumor that it may just be out of gas.

[9] There's a rumor that just may be out of gas.

[10] Great.

[11] Great.

[12] Hook, is it just out of diesel?

[13] Chapter 8, the briefcase.

[14] Eventually, after several hours, we get a working car.

[15] Yeah.

[16] Time to go?

[17] So we suit up.

[18] We put on our flag jackets, we put on our helmets.

[19] I've got several trash bags.

[20] It's been new again, huh?

[21] We're with the elite counterterrorism force of the Iraqi army.

[22] we have their permission to go and collect documents.

[23] What's the plan?

[24] This is very dangerous.

[25] And we've told them that we're specifically trying to get to one building.

[26] The airstrecks are still there, and it's a risk of the sniper's as well.

[27] But it's unclear if it's going to be safe enough to go there.

[28] So there's a sniper risk and they're planning an air strike?

[29] Yes.

[30] In fact, they've warned us that we're driving into an active war zone.

[31] So are we now inside Mosul?

[32] This is Mosul.

[33] This is Western Mosul.

[34] This is the main road leading from most of about that.

[35] There's huge chunks missing on the road.

[36] Are those airstrikes?

[37] Yeah.

[38] They're all airstrikes or V -BATs.

[39] How?

[40] Could you describe what you see?

[41] You're shaking your head.

[42] What do you mean?

[43] I mean, I'm speechless.

[44] As you can see, it's like just cars that was left of to be known as cars, and debris and rubble everywhere.

[45] I can't tell where I am I now.

[46] This is my city.

[47] I don't know where I want.

[48] You don't even recognize it?

[49] No. It's not recognizable.

[50] We got into the city.

[51] I think I'm going to walk as well.

[52] Okay.

[53] We got out of the car.

[54] Yeah.

[55] What do you see?

[56] So we're parked on a narrow street in Western Mosul.

[57] The houses all around us have been destroyed.

[58] The windows have been blasted out.

[59] coils of rebar, the gates and windows of the shops are warped from whatever blast they experienced.

[60] We just opened the doors to the car and immediately you could smell the stench of dead bodies.

[61] We can't see them, but you can smell them.

[62] So next we went to, I don't even know how you describe it, it's kind of like a makeshift base.

[63] Basically, the closest military position to where we were trying to go.

[64] And inside, there were all of these young military men.

[65] They were actually all from the CTS, the Counterterrorism Service.

[66] Right.

[67] And they're the people that were embedded with, so they invited us in.

[68] And you started talking with some of them.

[69] In his rank, please?

[70] The commanders all have the same sort of phone and sort of iPad that has a map.

[71] Where is ISIS?

[72] This thing.

[73] That shows.

[74] great detail.

[75] These are friendly spots.

[76] Where the friendly forces are and where ISIS is.

[77] So this is where we are.

[78] So the building we were aiming for was actually a church.

[79] This is the place that I knew had been the headquarters of the Hizpa, that the religious police, the same unit that Husefa used to be a member of.

[80] And the Hespa building is right here.

[81] It's at that point.

[82] This one.

[83] You see?

[84] That hawk recognized the scenery.

[85] And he went, oh my God, we're actually here.

[86] Have these buildings been cleared?

[87] So the officer who was in charge of this forward base?

[88] Did he say that he's going to try to find us something?

[89] He's going to try to find us an escort to go to the Hezbo building.

[90] Yes.

[91] He assigned a couple of Iraqi soldiers to escort us as we were going to go into these buildings to look for documents.

[92] If I speak about meters, it would be like four to five hundred meters.

[93] It would have been, I think, a couple of minutes walking if there was a road.

[94] Currently walking in each other's footsteps, just like we were trained.

[95] But we had to clamber over all of this rubble.

[96] Rookmini and Hock and I climbing over what looks like it used to be a taxi.

[97] We were walking on top of doorways, poking through windows, curving around the pillars of homes that had buckled.

[98] Rook Mee is now climbing over pieces of what was once a ten roof.

[99] I believe.

[100] Hey, smoke.

[101] You see this?

[102] Holy shit.

[103] So on this walk that we took towards the church, it became very apparent just how close we were in proximity to the front lines.

[104] I mean, in a way, hearing those sounds was reassuring to me because it just signaled that we were where we needed to be.

[105] What are you doing right now?

[106] I'm trying to get out some trash bags.

[107] We were about to go into the building.

[108] Finally, we got to the church.

[109] And...

[110] Could you just tell me real quick before we walk in, what sort of things you're hoping to find?

[111] We know that they kept careful, very detailed and meticulous records of the people they arrested and the Sharia punishments that they meted out against them.

[112] And obviously that would just be the gold mine if we were able to find that.

[113] The second we walked in, even though it was destroyed...

[114] Look, this is on Naba.

[115] I knew right away that this had been an ISIS base.

[116] This is the ISIS base.

[117] weekly newsletter.

[118] They had graffitied the pillars and other walls with the word Bakia.

[119] What does that mean?

[120] Bakia and Tatamadat, which means remaining and expanding.

[121] And this is their slogan.

[122] This is, think of it as ISIS forever.

[123] A bunch of computers, hard drives yanktow.

[124] We found...

[125] Well, this way, just to warn you, there's a couple of dead ISIS.

[126] They're right in the door.

[127] and they were rotten.

[128] We found two bodies that the Iraqi military said we're dead ISIS fighters.

[129] Yeah, to get fast and we're going to have to walk over their bodies.

[130] Just seriously walk over?

[131] Yeah.

[132] I mean, I hate to sound clinical about this, but to me it was one more confirmation that we're in the right place.

[133] This is a place that ISIS fighters were in, that they protected, and that they died for.

[134] So searching for documents, what's the first thing that you're looking for?

[135] So I'm looking for the areas that are related to papers.

[136] I'm looking for furniture, desks, filing cabinets, shelves, closets.

[137] I'm looking on the floors.

[138] Hey, Hogg.

[139] I wanted to ask Major Hassan if it's possible to pick up that backpack that's over there.

[140] We saw a pink backpack.

[141] Is it safe?

[142] It's a pink bag that has a kitten on it, and it's filled with C4, which is the explosive that they use in their homemade rockets.

[143] The backpack is still...

[144] Don't bring it over.

[145] In that same area, there were shell casings, remnants of weaponry.

[146] Off to the side, there was a hole in the ground that looked like it was a tunnel.

[147] We know that ISIS uses tunnels as a way to go underneath a building and come out into another one so that they avoid detection from the air.

[148] Park has found an old sword.

[149] And we found one of the swords that they used for executions, right?

[150] This sword used to behead people.

[151] Seriously?

[152] Yes?

[153] We were actually able to pick it up and hold it.

[154] Now it's hot.

[155] That was a surreal feeling.

[156] Yeah.

[157] Rukmini, can you describe what you're doing?

[158] I'm looking at a notebook here.

[159] I'm wondering if I have the courage to put it up.

[160] And then we started to find the remnants of their documents.

[161] And you, on the ground, you picked up a torn piece of paper.

[162] It was from the letterhead of the HESPA.

[163] You see anything, Rick Mini.

[164] We found several binders.

[165] that were labeled the one al -HISPA, which means the ministry of the religious police.

[166] And this stamp that you found says the same thing.

[167] This is the stamp.

[168] On their spine, the binders had the logo of the Hizpah.

[169] But the binders were empty.

[170] What this place looked like was the scene of a crime that had already been searched.

[171] I don't know who searched it before us, that ISIS come through here and take away all of these records because they knew that they would reveal the accounting of the various war crimes they committed was it another security force that was here before the one that we were with but no matter what the records that I was looking for they were gone still gunfire it's definitely a foreigner and at a certain point are in a hurry to get back people were starting to feel nervous about how much time we had spent in this area that we had exposed ourselves for too long I could go saying I could go I was definitely one of those people who was feeling nervous.

[172] So we began to walk back, and two of our colleagues have already walked off, and you and I and Hawk are walking in a smaller little group a little bit further behind, and suddenly Hawk calls out because he recognized that off to the side of the church, I hadn't even noticed it, there was a cluster of buildings, and he recognized them because he had worked as a translator for American forces.

[173] He was outed by a neighbor, and he was hauled off to see one of the cadis, the religious judge in this building, who threw him in jail for basically, I think, a night.

[174] So the desk was here.

[175] As I entered, there was a desk.

[176] There was another cushion here.

[177] And so we managed to make our way through, you know, the debris there, and we entered the room.

[178] That's what he wears.

[179] He used to wear this.

[180] This is the judge's robe.

[181] He put, like, a gown over his head.

[182] And the Cadi's robes were still hanging, the robe that he was wearing when he was judging people like Hawk.

[183] Hawk remember sitting in that very chair.

[184] You wrote my name, if the laptop is still here, I would have seen, you would have seen it my name.

[185] We go through his desk.

[186] We see that the drawers have already been pulled out.

[187] And Hawk just took off and ended up going into kind of the next set of rooms and the next set of rooms.

[188] How many more buildings do you want to look at it?

[189] And suddenly, he came walking out with a briefcase.

[190] He was patting it down to try to get the dust off of it.

[191] And he unzipped the main zipper.

[192] And suddenly I saw IDs, financial reports, receipts.

[193] And I recognized very quickly the Islamic State logo on those papers.

[194] Just enough to realize that this was something really significant.

[195] I remember this moment because it actually was so hot and we had been out in the sun for so long that the cable on my microphone was melting.

[196] The microphone was going in and out and I was fidgeting with it as you guys were over there talking and then it was in this moment that the New York Times push alert came through.

[197] The New York Times just that the Iraqi government claimed Mosul has been taken.

[198] Saying that the Iraqi government was claiming victory in Mosul.

[199] Right.

[200] Can you just explain what you're doing as you do it?

[201] So we're putting a towel down because there's going to be a lot of crap that is in this trash bag of stuff that we're bringing out.

[202] It's really dirty.

[203] Okay, so you and Hawk and I, we get back to our hotel in a safe part of Iraq.

[204] I hate you guys to take off your shoes.

[205] We grab one of the garbage bags with some of the stuff that we've gotten in Mosul, including this briefcase.

[206] Right.

[207] Can you just walk me through, like, what are the steps that you take next?

[208] Sure.

[209] So we put on surgical gloves.

[210] Thanks, man. And we empty out the contents of the garbage bag.

[211] Okay.

[212] Oof, got it smells bad.

[213] How would you describe that smell?

[214] How would you describe it?

[215] It's like what you would smell if you were in an airstrike and a building was falling around you.

[216] And we start making piles.

[217] Okay, we're going to make a pile of important and unimportant, okay?

[218] What we're seeing right away is...

[219] I think this must be the Zaccat that this person's paying.

[220] Probably, yeah.

[221] Important?

[222] There are books of receipts.

[223] Good guys.

[224] There are financial reports.

[225] They're so honest.

[226] They're taking receipts, motherfuckers.

[227] There are memos.

[228] This is some notes.

[229] Ooh, how exciting?

[230] There are letters on ISIS stationary between different ministries of ISIS.

[231] And this is like attorney general.

[232] Having detailed discussions about aspects of the economy.

[233] This is very new.

[234] This is basically evidence of a bunch of departments I didn't know existed.

[235] There are people's IDs.

[236] Keys.

[237] I have so many ISIS keys.

[238] There are CD -ROMs, and eventually everything that we have is going to be translated.

[239] And the best part is going to be sent to specialists who are going to help us mine every bit of the information we have gotten.

[240] Do you tell me how you feel right now?

[241] I'm feeling really excited.

[242] I'm feeling like giddy, you know?

[243] I will admit that I have never felt more like a detective finding clues.

[244] Like on ISIS CSI.

[245] You know, when I'm holding these documents, the thing that's never far from my mind is that if we hadn't retrieved these very papers from the rubble, they very likely would have been destroyed and would have been lost forever.

[246] I'm sorry to slow you down, but will you just describe what the bag looks like?

[247] So it's a black laptop bag that's...

[248] So when it comes to the briefcase specifically, what made it so special?

[249] Each pocket at a time.

[250] So the documents were pulling out of the briefcase He's like some kind of accountant or something Help confirm and flesh out The reporting I've already been doing up until this point How can you just describe how it looks?

[251] It looks really organized I mean this is like Excel Excel kind of worksheet And that is that ISIS is a self -sustaining organism When it comes to its own finances Much like the United States Makes money from a million different sources So too, ISIS had a diversified portfolio.

[252] They were making money from the fields that they taxed, from the seeds that they sold to people, from the flour that went to mills, from the traders who were being taxed as they were moving flour from one city to another, and from the merchants who stocked those commodities who had to pay income taxes once a year.

[253] And why is that specifically important to know?

[254] So one of the major ways that America and European governments tried to combat terrorism since 9 -11, was to try to starve these groups of cash.

[255] In the early years of al -Qaeda, the way they did this is they would look for their external donors and they would freeze their bank accounts.

[256] But there are no major donors in the ecosystem that is ISIS.

[257] Because the group is self -financed.

[258] There's no bank account in Saudi Arabia that you can freeze that would have any meaningful impact on the ledger of the Islamic State.

[259] There's not even a single source of weapons that you can cut off because according to one of the other documents we found in the briefcase, the faculty of military manufacturing and development.

[260] Oh my God.

[261] Oh my God.

[262] This is amazing.

[263] They had a division inside of their military that was dedicated to the manufacturing of weaponry.

[264] I'm kissing this piece of paper.

[265] I'm kissing this piece of paper that Hawk will only touch with gloves.

[266] You just kissed.

[267] Okay.

[268] We're going to create a very important pile.

[269] We're going to put that.

[270] Yeah.

[271] So basically this is indicating that we're going to.

[272] Within the Islamic State, there's a unit that is dedicated to manufacturing and developing weaponry.

[273] We've assumed that this is there, because they're doing them in such a uniform fashion, but this is it, finally, you know?

[274] This is a group that was hell -bent on being independent, on being self -sufficient, on relying on no one.

[275] This guy, the owner of this bag...

[276] And in this briefcase...

[277] Some guy, some head guy, some big hide, big shot.

[278] We found transactions totaling $19 million.

[279] We actually took the time to add up the receipts and invoices that we found inside, and that's what we came up with.

[280] 19 million, right?

[281] So we knew that whoever owned this briefcase had to be important.

[282] Like a high -up, like a general or something like that.

[283] Not a general, a bureaucrat.

[284] So unlike the United States, which went into Iraq in 2003, and immediately dissolved the bathist state of Saddam Hussein, And essentially through all of these people, these administrators, into unemployment and created the conditions that eventually led to the rise of terror groups in Iraq, ISIS did the exact opposite.

[285] They came to Mosul and they built their state on the back of the one that already existed.

[286] And so the civil servants who had worked in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Sanitation and the Electricity Division, they kept doing the same job that they had done before.

[287] Do brother Abu Ha, sorry, this guy is this guy.

[288] So we know that whoever it was who owned this briefcase, they worked as a bureaucrat.

[289] That's right.

[290] And beyond that, what we're able to figure out from looking at the papers, it's all the same name.

[291] Is that the person's name is Abu Dara.

[292] We're seeing paper after paper signed with this name.

[293] But that doesn't actually help us identify who this human being is because Abu Dara is a codename.

[294] It's a kunia.

[295] It's a nondaguer.

[296] and the whole purpose of having a kunya is to hide the identity of the person who's using it.

[297] But in the briefcase, in one of the folds of the briefcase, we pulled out a color Xerox of an ID belonging to a man named Yasser Issa.

[298] You see his picture.

[299] It's a man with a receding hairline with a bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows, and kind of a Saddam Hussein -style mustache.

[300] And we then pull out the marriage certificate, of Yasser Issa.

[301] I'm putting this in important.

[302] But finally, the document that we pull out that seals the deal is Yasser Issa's Pledge of Allegiance to ISIS.

[303] I'm going to put that in important.

[304] We see that in 2014, not long after Mosul fell, in Mosul, he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.

[305] It has his full name, and it says that his Kunya or his Nondaguer is Abujarro.

[306] So we now know, Yasser Issa is a Muslim Abujara, okay?

[307] And Abujara is the administrator of the trade division.

[308] So now you know his job title.

[309] Oh, now we know his job title.

[310] You've got his merit.

[311] So you've got his real name.

[312] We've got his real name.

[313] You know his wife's name.

[314] We know his wife's name.

[315] You know his title.

[316] Hang on, let's put that.

[317] Maybe we can find this guy.

[318] Okay.

[319] What do you do next?

[320] Right.

[321] So now that we have all this information, we're looking for somebody who might have interacted with him.

[322] And in the briefcase, we found a whole bunch of documents from local mills in North in Iraq and especially from the Mosul area.

[323] Does you remember an ISIS guy called Abu Jarrah?

[324] And so Hawk and I ended up driving from mill to mill, trying to find people who might remember a man named Abu Jarach.

[325] And the employees of the mills and the silos and the granaries, the very people who had dealt with ISIS leadership, they recognized his name.

[326] Average.

[327] And they knew him specifically as one of ISIS's moneymen.

[328] He was a person who was...

[329] He was a person who was...