“The secret history of ISIS”

The guerrilla army that roared east to take over, it was early 2014.  ISIS has seized many
Iraqi cities. They seemed to come out of nowhere. In northern Iraq, a number of districts have
been taken over by fighters. Militants have swallowed up territory and they’re pushing toward
Baghdad. The terror group ISIS started capturing key territory in Iraq. CHUCK HAGEL,
Secretary of Defense, 2013-15: The jolting gong was when they swept into western Iraq and took
control of a third of western Iraq, The banks that were robbed and stripped, the assets that were
stripped in that entire area was huge. And that was, as I said, the jolting gong that said, Deep
concern about ISIS pushing into Baghdad ISIS has been seizing territory in Iraq and Syria. ALI
SOUFAN, FBI, 1997-2005: They were able to swiftly take over huge areas of Iraq. It was
shocking how the army didn’t even fight, didn’t even put up a fight. And taking over Mosul, the
second largest city, I think Washington was stunned when the second largest city in Iraq, a city
of two million people, fell in a day to a terrorist organization that we had not imagined was in the
first order of terrorist organizations. But these fighters were not new. They had been at war for
more than a decade, ever since the American invasion of Iraq. They have used beheadings,
suicide bombings and mass killings to implement a violent plan, a plan designed and carried out
by this man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of ISIS. The secret history of ISIS began at the
CIA in the aftermath of 9/11. There was an urgent question about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.NADA
BAKOS, CIA, 2000-08: I was an analyst working on the team that was charged with evaluating
whether or not Al Qaeda and Iraq had conspired together to conduct 9/11 attacks. At the
agency’s Counterterrorism Center, analyst Nada Bakos was tasked with learning everything she
could about Zarqawi. On the team, as an analyst, the big question was whether or not Zarqawi
was part of Al Qaeda at the time. Bakos began by piecing together Zarqawi’s life. Zarqawi grew
up in Zarqa, Jordan, which was also near a Palestinian refugee camp. He was a tough kid in a
tough neighborhood. Poor and angry, it didn’t take long for Zarqawi to get into trouble. He was a
thug. He was in and out of prison. He was a petty criminal. It was rumored that he had worked as
a pimp. He was into drugs. He was into tattoos. You know, his fiends in Zarqa used to call him
the green man because of all the tattoos that he had on his body. Behind bars, Zarqawi would
undergo a transformation.
CRAIG WHITLOCK, The Washington Post: In this prison, Al Jafr prison, they allowed
him to share a cellblock with other radical fighters or people who wanted to launch jihad.
RICHARD BARRETT, MI5/MI6, 1975-2004: In prison, he really came into his own because he
managed to dominate the other prisoners. He managed to establish himself as a leader. He took
his religion more and more seriously.Zarqawi at the time was the muscle of the movement in jail,
and he roughed a lot of people up during his time in jail.As the green man became more
religious, he knew his tattoos would be viewed as sinful. A razor blade was smuggled into the
prison. It was brutal. He had them actually, the skin taken off. It’s like he’s shedding his old life.
And this tattoo was a reminder of who he was, and he had to get rid of that, to almost purify
himself.
After five years, Zarqawi was released. WILL McCANTS, Author, The ISIS
Apocalypse: Zarqawi became a leader among the jihadists in prison and came out of prison in
Jordan a jihadist firebrand, had reimagined himself as a mujahid, or holy warrior, dedicated to
the establishment of the Islamic empire. In his quest to become a holy warrior, Zarqawi left
Jordan. The CIA tracked him to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Zarqawi hoped to meet Osama bin
Laden. When he does go to Kandahar to try to meet with bin Laden, he’s rejected. At this point,
Zarqawi is so low on the totem pole, as to something that was just beneath him. BRUCE
HOFFMAN, Author, Inside Terrorism: Neither Osama bin Laden nor his deputy, Ayman al
Zawahiri, were terribly impressed with him. He seemed and acted like a thug. He was not very
sophisticated. In fact, they considered him a rather poor recruit to Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi would leave Kandahar determined to continue jihad and to prove bin Laden
wrong. In 2002, he saw his chance. As President Bush signaled Saddam Hussein had to go,
Zarqawi moved to a terrorist camp in northern Iraq. It set off alarm bells at the CIA. CIA
operations officer Sam Faddis, who ran a kill/capture team, was assigned the case. SAM
FADDIS, CIA, 1988-2008: Headquarters is extremely, extremely interested. I mean, the number
one time-sensitive priority as of June ‘02, when I left headquarters, was go collect on this Islamic
extremist enclave along the Iran-Iraq border. It didn’t take long for Faddis to find Zarqawi and
learn what was going on in the camp. We literally had guys that were working for us that were
inside the camp. They were working on chemical and biological weapons. They were doing a lot
of work with cyanide-based things. At CIA headquarters, it was a threat they could not ignore if
American troops were to invade Iraq. MICHAEL SCHEUER, CIA, 1982-2004: If we took
Saddam out, Zarqawi was going to cause a lot of problems. He was someone who we would
have wanted dead if we had the opportunity and the wherewithal to do it. And Sam Faddis had a
plan to do just that. I mean, a handful of aircraft, tomorrow, with the specificity that we have in
their locations, will end this threat. And we will finish these guys. This seemed like the perfect
moment. We know where they are. You know, we know what they’re up to. This seemed like the
right time to target them and to go after them. The attack plan was fast tracked from the CIA to
the White House. But as America prepared to take out Saddam Hussein, the president was told
that hitting Zarqawi could cause a problem. COLIN POWELL, Secretary of State, 2001-05: I
remember there were discussions about attacking various camps that we thought bad guys were
hanging out in, and I think the one you’re referring to, we made a judgment that, “Let’s not start
the war before we’re ready.” When news of the decision reached CIA headquarters, there was
frustration. Oh! I couldn’t believe it. We have a prime opportunity to take out a jihadist that we
know poses a threat to our allies, in addition to American forces once they invade. There was
nobody on that team who felt like Washington had made the right decision. There’s another
country getting up, ready to go up in flames. We’re giving them time and space. This will turn
out very badly. We need to get them, get rid of them right now. But as Vice President Dick
Cheney headed to the CIA, he was preparing to do something else with Zarqawi, use him to
connect bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to make the case for war. Vice President Cheney came
to the CIA, asking lots of questions. He wanted to know, is not only, Is there a connection
between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, but we want there to be a connection between the two.”
The CIA officers believed there was no evidence of a connection. No. Never. We never found
any indication that Zarqawi was in Baghdad working for Saddam or linked up with Saddam. The
vice president and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, pushed back. It was pretty intense. We were
lined up on one side of the table. Vice President Cheney and Scooter Libby were on the other
side. And they walked in with a lot of questions and being very skeptical as to the intelligence
that we had been gathering up to that point. Cheney seemed to want Zarqawi to be the link
between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The vice president’s frustrated. His questions
are all about Zarqawi and his connection to Saddam, and whether or not they had discussed 9/11,
and if Saddam had participated. Bakos says the vice president didn’t like the answer. We tried to
explain over and over again that it would be impossible for him logically to be working with
Saddam.Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an
associate, collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants. It drew conclusions
that and language we would not use. So we were very, very, very careful about describing the
relationship as we saw it, and it seemed to overinflate and not reflect our analysis. How did that
happen, Nada? Within the process of how it went you know, where it went back to the White
House and who worked on it after that, I don’t know how it was changed, or by who. Powell now
says the speech was approved by CIA chief George Tenet, but he doesn’t remember the details
about Zarqawi. I I don’t I don’t remember. Zarqawi was not anything uppermost in my mind. It
was not a significant part of the speech for me. It was almost a passing reference. But it was
more than a passing reference. Seven minutes of Powell’s speech were devoted to Zarqawi. His
name is mentioned 21 times. Powell transformed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the eyes of the
world. From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and
beyond. I can’t even imagine what that did for Zarqawi’s ego, to be you know, here he is, his
name is spoken at the U.N. Now he’s showing bin Laden and Al Qaeda who he really is, right?
He’s become this iconic person without ever really doing anything. In the days that followed the
speech, Zarqawi disappeared. A rapid series of 40 explosions lit up Baghdad in the early
morning hours. Military officials have been using the term “shock and awe” to describe the
assault on Iraq. Zarqawi watched the American shock and awe campaign. And as the occupation
began, Zarqawi waited for an opportunity. Before long, the man George W. Bush picked to run
Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, gave him one. PAUL BREMER, Iraq Administrator, 2003-04 May 15,
2003 And those who were on high before, in particular the Ba’athists. He promised to purge the
Iraqi government. Who used their power to oppress the Iraqi people, will be removed from
office. He also issued an order that disbanded the entire Iraqi military. DEXTER FILKINS, The
New Yorker: You had something on the order of 250,000 Iraqi men, military age, all trained in
using weapons. Suddenly, they were all out of a job. The powerful message, Saddam and his
Sunni-controlled army were no longer in charge. The army was the central instrument of
Saddam’s repression of the Kurds and the Shia. I think the decision not to recall Saddam’s army,
from a political point of view, is the single most important correct decision that we made in the
14 months that we were there. But on the ground, the American military commanders could feel
the effects. Gen. DAVID PETRAEUS, Cmdr., 101st Airborne, 2002-04: The effect, frankly, was
devastating. I think that’s where the seeds of what became the Sunni insurgency were largely
planted. EMMA SKY, Iraq Coalition Authority, 2003-04: We had, you know, long lines of
soldiers demanding money, demanding to be rehired. There was that whole sense of, you know,
that militaries, defeated militaries, should be treated with respect. The immediate effect of that
was the U.N. left, and all the NGOs were gone within a few weeks, all of them. And so it
essentially left the Americans alone. That was it. It’s just you. It turned Baghdad into a kind of—
this eerie militarized ghost town. A U.S. vehicle was on patrol when it came under attack.
Violence has returned with a vengeance. Last night, two more soldiers exploded in violence
today. The most deadly was a car bombing, killed at least 11 people. In Washington, Bakos and
other analysts sifted the evidence from the bombings. Soon, President George W. Bush received
a briefing document written by Bakos but without her name attached. It outlined Zarqawi’s role
in the bombings. I wrote a Presidential Daily Brief based on intelligence that we had received
that Zarqawi was responsible for some of the major initial attacks in 2003, that he was still there
and that he was looking to foment civil war. The information made its way to Scooter Libby in
the vice president’s office. Bakos says she was at her desk at the CIA, her private phone rang. I
received a phone call at my desk, to my own line, from Scooter Libby’s office. To call an
individual analyst is only about pressuring them, intimidation. We write these anonymously.
When they go to the White House, our names are not attached to the brief. And I immediately
told him I couldn’t discuss any of this and hung up. At the vice president’s office, they weren’t
done with Bakos. She and her supervisor were summoned for a face-to-face meeting with Libby.
We were there because they wanted to figure out how they could poke holes in the analysis. The
questions centered around Bakos’s conclusion that there was an organized insurgency led by
Zarqawi. There was a lot of consternation in the administration using the term “insurgents”
because it would look as if the Iraqis weren’t embracing what we were doing. Insurgency implies
that they’re fighting against us.
Certainly, in the fall of 2003, the United States was in denial that an insurgency was
brewing. In fact, that terminology was almost outlawed. No one could use it. We wanted to ask
the vice president and his chief of staff about these matters, but neither would agree to be
interviewed. Four car bombs went off almost simultaneously. The attacks came during the busy
Baghdad commute. And at least 35 people have been killed in a huge car bomb attack in
Baghdad. In Iraq, with America’s top leaders in denial, Zarqawi was free to raise the stakes.
RICHARD CLARKE, U.S. Counterterror Adviser, 1992-2001: I think the senior leadership of
the Bush administration was slow to realize, A, that there was an insurgency, and B, that there
was an evil genius behind it, and C, that evil genius was Zarqawi. My name is Nick Berg. My
father’s name is Michael. Zarqawi would now send a message to the American people. Zarqawi
had already captured people’s attention from the succession of suicide bombings. Now he
cultivated a different means to do so. And with someone like Nicholas Berg, I think very
tragically, he found exactly the kind of person he wanted, an American, a do-gooder, who was
also Jewish. That’s Zarqawi in the middle. Tens of thousands would die. And that set off a cycle
of violence between Sunni and Shia that Al Qaeda tried to fuel as much as they possibly could,
Zarqawi directing it, of course, very capably. NADA BAKOS, CIA, 2000-08: Zarqawi achieved
what he wanted to achieve. He had fomented anger and fear and frustration enough that
populations felt pitted against each other. As the civil war raged, Zarqawi decided to do
something bold. He would reveal his face on camera. The only thing they will get from us is a
slashing sword! BRUCE HOFFMAN, U.S. Military Adviser, 2004-05: He understood the power
of the Internet. It showed him using an American automatic weapon not necessarily using it
correctly, but he did use it in a way that I think established his flair for publicity. It’s propaganda.
It’s recruitment. It shows what their intention is, He’s wanting other people to join him. He’s
building his army at this point. In the video, Zarqawi made a surprising proclamation. He would
create an Islamic state, the first step toward a global caliphate, nn Islamic state in which the word
of God will reign supreme. PATRICK SKINNER, CIA, 2003-10: He was never content just to
be the thug from Zarqa and he wasn’t content just to be the guy who beheaded Nick Berg, he
wanted to rule a caliphate. It was something bin Laden hadn’t yet pushed for. RICHARD
BARRETT, U.N. Counterterror, 2004-13: Al Qaeda saw that time as a long way off, and
Zarqawi was very, very much more impatient and said, “This we can we can do now. “ For
Zarqawi, the creation of the caliphate would be the fulfillment of a prophecy. WILL McCANTS,
Author, The ISIS Apocalypse: That religious vision promises the return of God’s kingdom on
earth, the reestablishment of the early Islamic empire, the empowerment of Sunni Muslims
around the world, that the reestablished caliphate will eventually take over the entire globe, and
then the entire world will come crashing to an end. Gen. WILLIAM CALDWELL The lead
aircraft is going to engage it here momentarily with a 500-pound bomb on the target. The next
video the world would see of Zarqawi was very different. In 2006, the U.S. military received a
tip and bombed Zarqawi’s hideout. The terrorist whose forces set off so many Zarqawi was dead,
but his call for an Islamic state would live on. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious leader of Al
Qaeda in Iraq, is dead. Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH Zarqawi’s death is a severe blow to Al Qaeda.
It’s a victory in the global war on terror. President Bush seized the initiative. He ordered a surge
of American troops into Iraq to stop the bloodshed. Both Iraqis and Americans will try to slow
down the killing among Sunni Arabs. The surge begins, but the president stands increasingly
alone. The White House is calling its Iraq plan General David Petraeus was the commander. The
priority had to be on securing the Iraqi population, and that this could only be done by living
with the people. So we went back into the neighborhoods in Baghdad and other areas that were
threatened by this ever-spiraling Sunni/Shia cycle of violence. Helped by hundreds of millions of
dollars, Petraeus made an alliance with the Sunni tribes that had once worked with Zarqawi.
EMMA SKY, U.S. Military Adviser, 2007-10: The hierarchy in society, chopped off too many
heads there, taken too many wives from the local population, had upset the power structures.
Guys from the tribes started to turn against Al Qaeda and looked to the U.S. military for support.
One by one, American special forces and former Sunni militants killed Zarqawi’s followers. Col.
DEREK HARVEY (Ret.), Adviser to Gen. Petraeus, 2007-08: Al Qaeda in Iraq had been
eviscerated. There were probably 37 individuals that survived that onslaught that we created in
‘07 and ‘08 that were really Al Qaeda. The definition of destruction is that you are rendered
incapable of performing your mission without reconstitution. So they’re flat on their face, and
they’re down, and we had our boot on their neck. What was left of Zarqawi’s group would go
underground for three years. By 2009, the war in Iraq was the responsibility of a new president.
President Obama was elected on a promise to get the United States out of Iraq, and he was
determined to do that. And early in his presidency, he announced his plan in front of thousands
of Marines. Pres. BARACK OBAMA I’ve come to speak to you about how the war in Iraq will
end. The situation in Iraq has improved. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been dealt a serious blow by our
troops and Iraq’s security forces. For Barack Obama, it was time to move on from Iraq. Pres.
BARACK OBAMA: I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.  The last
U.S. troops are now leaving Iraq. They’re packing up and ready to hand over the remaining
Almost after nine years of war and thousands of lives lost Amb. RYAN CROCKER, Iraq, 2007-
09: We disengaged not only militarily at the end of 2011, we disengaged politically. The war was
over. We were out. Let the chips fall where they may. Well, I don’t think we thought through
exactly how many chips were going to fall and what the consequences of that would be. Once the
Americans were gone, what was left of Zarqawi’s group, isolated in northwestern Iraq, began to
rebuild. They had a new leader, Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. I mean, he really is
a chip off the old block, in terms of Zarqawi. He has the same sort of sensibilities, the same flair
for publicity, the same obsession with widespread violence. They are a part of a similar ideology.
They believe in political Islam. They have a view of the caliphate. Baghdadi had a Ph.D. He was
a soccer player. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s journey from religious scholar to jihadist leader started
back in the early days of the American occupation. As the U.S. Army conducted mass sweeps of
the Sunni population, Baghdadi was put into an American prison. For a number of people who’d
spent time in these jails, they spoke about them as jihadi training camps. So through being in jail
together, people created new networks. They were known as jihadi universities. Baghdadi
learned Zarqawi’s methods. RICHARD CLARKE, Author, Against All Enemies: He wanted to
establish the caliphate now. He wanted to take over towns, villages, and then cities. The border
between Iraq and Syria could disappear if his organization controlled both sides of the border. In
Damascus, Baghdadi’s men used the bloody methods of Zarqawi’s insurgency to announce their
presence. Amb. ROBERT FORD, Syria, 2010-14: I was sitting in my ambassador’s residence in
the upstairs den reading when the two bombs went off. Immediately, from my time in Iraq, I
knew those are car bombs. That’s not that’s not a normal sound here in Damascus. Ambassador
Ford dispatched a reconnaissance team to the site.ROBERT FORD Got a sense of how big the
holes were and what had happened. The way the car bombs were delivered, crashing through
gates with a follow-on car, was exactly what we had seen the Al Qaeda organization do in Iraq.
And so it had the fingerprints of Al Qaeda.BRUCE HOFFMAN, Author, Inside Terrorism: The
wave of car bombings that convulsed Damascus showed that tactics that had been successfully
employed in Iraq had now been successfully exported to Syria. Zarqawi’s organization had not
only survived, it was growing and starting to capture territory. Back-to-back explosions hit the
capital of Damascus early on Friday. Authorities say at least 40 people were killed and more than
a hundred. Back in Washington, at the State Department, Ambassador Ford was worried. He
wanted to offer military aid to Syrian rebels who were seen as moderates. My team, working in
our little offices and cubicles downstairs, began to think we would have to help those more
moderate secular elements compete for recruits. Otherwise, they over time would be
overwhelmed. But first the White House would have to sign off. Ford had three important allies
in the administration, CIA Director David Petraeus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. They made the case to the president. From the pulpit, Baghdadi
finally fulfilled Zarqawi’s dream. He made it official, declaring himself the caliph, the ruler of
the global caliphate. They hastened to declare the caliphate and choose the imam. Baghdadi
addresses the assembled audience and proclaims himself the caliph and the ruler of Muslims
worldwide. He proclaims the victory of Zarqawi’s political project nearly a decade earlier. They
now control a swath of territory containing some five million people. They have a war chest of
some $2 billion. It’s a remarkable success for an organization that was soundly defeated in 2009.
Baghdadi had turned Zarqawi’s vision into a terrifying reality.On the eve of 9/11, we have 400
pledged members, you know, people who pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden. But now they
have countries. They have armies. They have tanks. They have missiles. They have stuff that
Osama bin Laden did not dream to have in his wildest dreams. The United States of America is
meeting them with strength and resolve. I ordered our military to take targeted action against
ISIL. In the nearly two years since Baghdadi’s sermon, the Islamic State has come under assault
from the Americans, the Iraqis, the Russians, the Iranians and many others. They have lost
territory, but ISIS has already gone global inside the parliament building Canada’s capital is
stunned. Copenhagen, Denmark, a city in terror, Isis conducted or inspired horrible scene in
northeastern Egypt tonight more than 90 attacks around the world multiple attacks have occurred
in or around Paris and have more than 40 affiliated terror groups in 16 countries. Massacre in
San Bernardino today. The attack left at least 14 people dead. They have promised that the worst
is yet to come from what investigators say was an ISIS suicide bomb attack in Turkey. Now,
Belgian officials say 34 people were killed and 187 were wounded in two explosions. After
today’s horror, the question is how many more terrorists are ready to strike.