Chapter 448

I was reading one page after another; Ching Lee was doing the same thing on her computer. I was just finishing up when the wheels hit the runway at Minneapolis - St Paul International Airport.

The one thing I gleaned from all that reading was that there was a standard question set they were asking all my men. I was sure those questions had been tailored with the assistance of Curtis Warren and others. I wondered if they would use the same questions for us.

Marcy had the local MAAR send 3 SUVs to the general aviation terminal for us. As traffic was light, we were close to an hour early.

Another thing Curtis had done was to have interrogations held in the big security meeting room at the college; for convenience close proximity to the tragedy. It was also for field review if necessary; all making sense.

Frank, Eric and Kent Dalton were already there. I stuck my head into big meeting room to say, “Morning,” while the rest of my group hit the table of donuts and coffee. Ching Lee, Andy and I went into the smaller meeting room; I wanted to review the two top secret packages. I brought coffee and one donut.

I opened the first package and slid out its contents and a super duty magnifying glass. There was also a handwritten note from Robert, “I was not sure what you were looking for, so I broke it down by every frame, 4 pictures to a second.”

I looked through one picture at a time with the magnifying glass. Ching was almost sitting in my lap looking at the pictures with me. I handed each one to Andy as I was done.

I saw it or I thought I saw it. It was just a shadow but it moved further across each picture. Then there was a ripple in the skin of her forehead that turned into a bump. The next picture was the start of the stumble and the beginning of the explosion.

There was a knock on the door; Eric, Frank, and Len were there, “We are almost ready to start.”

“I’m not ready yet; they will wait. Take a seat,” I said as I pointed to a chair.

In the next picture the burka had started to expand like a gust of wind was under it; there signs of exit material from the back of head and the head scarf was coming off.

The next was of the body disintegrating, pieces going everywhere. I didn’t need to see any more, my question was answered. Someone on the roof put a round in her head to stop her from getting to the building.

“Did you see what I see?” I asked Andy.

“Yeah, I think so, now what?” he asked.

“I know, you know and we don’t know who, so that is the end of it,” I replied.

I looked at Eric, “Do you want a look?” I asked. I was sure they had done the same thing to the video, or should have done.

“Sure,” he replied as I handed the packet over but kept the magnifying glass; make them ask for it, I thought.

They all looked through them and handed them back, “I don’t know what you are seeing, they look OK to me,” Eric replied.

I open the next top secret package; it was from Ben-David. The top sheet was typed.

“I know this is not what you want to hear; it is not good, you have been misled again,” the sheet read.

After Andy and Ching Lee read it I slid it over to Eric and did the same with the following sheets as we looked at them.

There was a news paper clipping from AP with a release from the Defense Department dated almost a year ago.

“Saif Alawai al-Jawfi, senior bomb maker, explosive expert and trainer was killed in a drone strike in western Iraq today. Iraq sources on the ground confirmed the death. Saif Alawai al-Jawfi was one of the most feared IED and suicide vest makers in all Iraq with his products killing and maiming thousands.”

The next sheet was a color picture of Saif.

The next dozen pictures were comparison pictures with the individual pictures Ching Lee had taken of the vest on the two I had disabled, with notes on them and things circled.

Note; the following comparisons are from a dozen captured suicide vests made by Saif Alawai al-Jawfi over a year’s time-frame at different locations in Iraq.