Who the Hell Is Jack Idema?

Sentenced to 10 years in an Afghan jail, Jack Idema claims he was cut loose by the Pentagon while on a top-secret mission. Is he simply a deluded freelance bounty hunter, or an American hero?

Maxim, December 2004

Laura Winter

The first time I met Jonathan “Jack” Keith Idema, he was wearing fatigues, a black T-shirt, combat boots, and black Ray Bans. He strode across the hotel lobby like he owned the place. It was late December 2001. The Spin Ghar Hotel, the only habitable hotel in Jalalabad, was packed with exhausted journos covered in dust, all worried about how to get home for Christmas.

We had just come down from the mountains after covering the failed hunt for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves. Many of us hadn’t seen a shower in two weeks. But Idema looked fresh and clean. Which was remarkable, considering he’d just driven five hours over the dusty, crater-strewn highway from Kabul.

A female colleague and I both thought the same thing: Who the hell is this yahoo? He’s a little late for the party. Right then Idema gravitated toward us, probably because we were the only women in sight. He introduced himself as Jack. I asked him what he was doing in Jalalabad. In a hushed tone he said, “I’m Donald Rumsfeld’s special representative to the Northern Alliance. My mission is kind of quiet. You see, I’m on the ranch. I can tell you guys because I know you can keep a secret.”

With that my bullshit bells started ringing.

“So where are you from? What is your mission?” I asked him.

“I’m advising the Northern Alliance,” he replied. “I can’t tell you any more than that.”

At that moment Hazrat Ali, the local warlord, and half a dozen of his bodyguards arrived. Idema moved to greet the warlord and usher him into a ground-floor meeting room. A few minutes later, Idema came out and offered us a press conference for $100 a head.

“Do you guys know who this Jack person is?” I asked a nearby photographer.

“Yeah, we know Jack,” he answered. “We like to call him Jack Shit.”

The photographer sized up Idema as a war tourist who had upgraded to tour operator. A half-dozen journalists had paid him $1,000 a head for a ride from Kabul to Tora Bora, with exclusive press conferences.

I heard later that Idema had told Ali that the journalists were actually Pentagon officials. He persuaded the warlord to give them a briefing, arguing it would boost his standing with the Pentagon. I couldn’t help but be impressed at how effectively Idema had worked both sides.

Last July, when I heard that Idema, now 48, and two other Americans had been arrested in Kabul for setting up their own detention facility and torturing eight Afghans, I wasn’t that surprised. By then I also knew Idema was a convicted felon and ex–Green Beret who’d come to Afghanistan to fight for America and hunt for bin Laden. In jail Idema was making his usual extravagant claims: “We would have had bin Laden in less than 30 days,” he told the AP. He swore the men he’d detained had been plotting to kill Afghan officials and blow up Bagram Air Base. Rumsfeld knew all about it, he said, an assertion that Pentagon officials were flatly denying. It sounded like Idema had finally gone off the deep end, and now innocent Afghans had paid for it.

But one thing didn’t make sense: How could a guy with a mouth as big as Idema’s run around arresting and interrogating people without someone knowing about it?

Into the Jackrabbit Hole

Every American male with a drop of red in his veins has fantasized about capturing bin Laden. Idema was a guy who actually intended to do it, a civilian who left his job and his wife and sold his truck to get money to come to Afghanistan. For Idema, hunting bin Laden was more than mere fantasy. But his harshest critics say that most of his life has been exactly that.

Idema’s past is a rabbit hole of hard-to-verify but tantalizing claims. Depending on whom you ask, he could be an ultrapatriotic American James Bond, a dangerously psychotic wannabe, or a strange hybrid of the two.

The son of a Pentagon secretary and a retired marine, he grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. He became obsessed with all things military in 1968, at age 12, after watching John Wayne battle the Vietcong in The Green Berets. After enlisting in the Army at 17 and qualifying for the 10th Special Forces Group, he served three years’ active duty. He was honorably discharged, served another six years in the reserves, and claims to have operated all over the world. Green Beret deployments are typically secret, but one record that does exist is from one of his supervisors, who wrote that Idema was “without a doubt the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man I have ever known.”

In 1979, Idema and a Special Forces buddy founded the Counterr Group Academy in Red Hook, New York. They taught law-enforcement personnel modern tactics and techniques of armed encounters and terrorism prevention. In 1991, Idema traveled to Lithuania to train cops and returned with detailed information on how the Russian mafia was trafficking Soviet nuclear weapons material to the highest bidders: terrorists. He said he briefed Pentagon officials about it in 1992, but when the FBI and CIA approached him for his sources, he refused, telling the two agencies they had too many moles.

At that point, Idema has always insisted, the FBI launched an investigation into his dealings that culminated in charges of fraud. Idema represented himself in the case, and a federal jury found him guilty of 55 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to four years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina. Not long afterward, the FBI agent Idema claimed supervised his fraud investigation—Earl Edwin Pitts—was discovered to be a Russian spy.

An Army of One

Idema was released in 1998 and went back to his much-scaled-down business, but not for long. September 11 changed everything.

“President Bush said we’re all soldiers in the war on terror, and we should do whatever we could do,” he later said. “I was a Green Beret, and I knew what I could do. I went.”

Traveling through Uzbekistan, he arrived in Afghanistan that October, only days after the first Green Berets. Sporting an AK-47 and wearing sunglasses, a beard, desert camouflage, and a checkered scarf, he looked like just another operator. He began referring to himself simply as Jack. And he knew how to talk the talk.

“I saw him talking with Special Forces,” said an Afghan journalist who asked to remain anonymous. “He presented himself to them as the special representative from the Pentagon to Afghanistan. They didn’t question him…Anybody could just show up and say, ‘I’m coming from the CIA or the Pentagon.’ They did not have the means or the time to confirm his identity. I thought, It’s not a simple thing for this man, coming into this country. He either has to be a real man or a psycho.”

Idema quickly melded into the warrior-rich landscape, advising NGOs, journalists, and even the Northern Alliance, America’s ally against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He seemed to show up at all the defining moments. When his friend Gary Scurka became the first journalist wounded in the conflict, Idema was there, administering medical aid. Later he was the man who found (and sold) captured videotapes depicting Al Qaeda training operations, some of which aired on CBS. He made headlines by threatening to punch out Geraldo Rivera, who Idema claimed was trying to film a U.S. sniper position in Tora Bora. Fox even hired him as an analyst, and for a while he was a media commodity.

He returned to the U.S. in the summer of 2002 and advised The Green Berets author Robin Moore on his next Special Forces tale, The Hunt for bin Laden. Over the next year and a half, he worked the media circuit, giving interviews about Afghanistan and, as always, rocking the boat. He told MSNBC reporter Mike Barnicle that—contrary to CIA reports—widespread Iraqi support for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was “common knowledge.” He also sued Fox for airing one of his captured Al Qaeda tapes without paying him.

Then, last April, he returned to Afghanistan, hot on a mission he would claim might have led him right to bin Laden.

Tips From Terrorists

The second time I met Idema was in the administrator’s office of the National Directorate of Security’s jail in Kabul. It was August 4 of this year, a month after his arrest. Ushered in by guards, his steps were wobbly. He would later say he’d been beaten. I asked this now thin and pale-yellow man why he was there.

Idema told me that in 2001 he’d interrogated some Al Qaeda prisoners captured at Tora Bora. He had turned them into intelligence assets, given them satellite phones and cash, and set them loose to spy on their former master, bin Laden. Then, last February, his sources told him the possible whereabouts of bin Laden, and about a plot targeting the U.S. Embassy and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.

“They were going to use 12 taxi bombs,” he told me. “I had the name of the guy. His name was Ghulam Sakhi.”

Idema said he quickly alerted his old foe, the FBI. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, much to Idema’s annoyance, put out a warning to American citizens about the possibility of a terrorist attack with taxis. The attack did not come. Idema believes the alert forced Sakhi into hiding in Pakistan…temporarily.

Frustrated with what he calls the FBI’s foot-dragging, in late March he contacted someone in the Pentagon whose name he refused to reveal. “The bottom line is, the Department of Defense tells me, ‘We can’t help you in the United States. And we can’t get you into [Afghanistan]. You get in and then we can work together,’” Idema said.

Idema quickly assembled a team consisting of Brent Bennett, a former Army tactical air- controller originally from Bridgeville, California, and Ed Caraballo, an Emmy Award–winning journalist working on a documentary about Idema.

Calling themselves Task Force Saber-7, the trio landed at Kabul International Airport on April 14 and were welcomed by Kabul’s police chief, Baba Jan. Idema rented a house in western Kabul and tapped his Northern Alliance contacts working in the Ministry of Defense and the National Directorate of Security, who supplied uniformed and armed soldiers. The hunt was on.

Within two weeks TFS-7 netted what Idema called a top Taliban official and delivered him to U.S. soldiers on the night of May 3. In mid-June, Idema got another tip: Sakhi, wearing a blue shalwar chemise, was en route to Kabul on a bus that could be loaded with explosives. Idema sent a desperate e-mail to the office of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the U.S. deputy undersecretary for defense, pleading for U.S. Army backup. Getting no reply, he made a decision.

With Caraballo’s camera rolling, TFS-7 raced through Kabul to meet the bus. Outside the city’s eastern gate, they pulled over on a desolate stretch of road and waited. When the bus approached, they waved it over, rifles in hand, and ordered everyone off. Idema singled out the young men dressed in gray and blue, then worked his way down a line, putting his forefinger on each man’s radial artery. He paused in front of a nervous Afghan in his late 20s who fit his informant’s description.

“He has a pulse rate of 160, shaking so bad he’s…Look at him,” Idema told his crew.

The man’s name was Ghulam Sakhi.

The Interrogations Begin

Thinking that within 72 hours Sakhi’s contacts would hear their explosives man was killed—or worse, captured and talking—Idema said he ordered his men to take Sakhi back to the house, where they placed him in the second-story bathroom and bound him to a chair with flexi-cuffs.

Most of the Afghan soldiers waited outside the door while a translator, a guard, and Idema interrogated him. Caraballo taped the exchange.

“What’s the target? What’s the target?” Idema yelled, pressing down on Sakhi’s back with his right hand. “Is it Fahim?” referring to Afghan defense minister general Mohammad Fahim.

“Fahim, Qanuni…Jamiat people,” Sakhi said.

“Who else?” Idema yelled.

Idema said Sakhi then told him about the plan to attack Bagram Air Base.

“When my Afghan soldiers found out that their plan was to kill Minister Qanuni and General Fahim and blow up Bagram base…my guys started. Wham! One of them hit him,” Idema said. “I took my soldier and punched him in front of Sakhi. I said, ‘Don’t hit the guy! I got him talking. What’s wrong with you?’ Sakhi was never hit.”

Idema admitted to me he used “aggressive” interrogation techniques, not unlike a few of the 20 some-odd sanctioned in the past by the Pentagon. These can include sleep deprivation, heavy doses of rock’n’roll, and “water boarding”—dunking a subject long enough so he believes he will drown. According to Idema, his methods worked. Sakhi gave up the identity and address of his Kabul contact, a 30-year-old taxi driver named Sher Jan.

Within hours TFS-7 was in Sher Jan’s house, where Idema was videotaped ripping open a rice bag and finding a detonator. They brought Sher Jan back to Idema’s house and drove his taxi to the desert, where an ISAF bomb-sniffing dog found traces of explosives in the vehicle.

Idema said he worked 18 to 20 hours a day interrogating his two prisoners and attending meetings with Afghan security officers and government officials. One of the alleged targets, then minister of education Younis Qanuni, congratulated the American terrorist-hunter for foiling the plot, and even sent his own security detachment to assist Idema in unraveling it more.

Within a few days, the prisoner population inside Idema’s house grew to eight, when his group arrested Maulavi Mohammad Siddiq, a mullah who happened to be a supreme court judge, along with his two brothers, also mullahs, and three other men. Inside the mullahs’ house, Idema said, ISAF bomb experts found explosives and detonating devices as well as color posters of terrorist leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar.

As the interrogations went on, Idema said, TFS-7 started gathering a wealth of information about planned bombings and operations and was on the verge of penetrating other cells. The only thing that prevented that from occurring was his arrest. He still didn’t know who had ordered it, given that many in the Afghan government and U.S. military seemed to know about his operation. He suspected it was the FBI.

Wanted posters with mug shots of Idema appeared in the streets of Kabul a week before his arrest. Realizing that somebody had cut him loose, Idema panicked. He called Lieutenant General Boykin’s office at the Pentagon, threatened to tell the press, and was told a mistake had been made. They asked him not to talk to the media. He also claimed that he called the Kabul police himself, as well as the military at Bagram.

“We were just getting ready to bring everybody to Bagram,” Idema said. “I tried calling Baba Jan because I wanted him to give us an escort.”

Baba Jan indeed showed up with men, on July 5, but the last thing Idema expected was that they would arrest him and his team.

A Torture Victim Speaks

Sakhi told me a much different story. He said that TFS-7 beat him even before the first question.

“First they beat me. Then they put my head in the water. I was underwater for maybe three minutes. I couldn’t breathe. I lost my consciousness,” Sakhi said. He claimed he repeatedly told Idema he did not know how to make bombs.

“They tortured me in the shower with hot water,” he continued. “They kept on yelling at me, ‘Tell us the facts; otherwise we will kill you.’”

Sakhi said he blurted out the name of Sher Jan, whom he knew from childhood. Sher Jan, according to Idema, gave them the names of more men after being interrogated.

All eight prisoners held by TFS-7 would claim similar abuses, ranging from being denied food to being suffocated with plastic bags.

After the arrest, TFS-7 and the prisoners were transported to the National Directorate for Security (NDS) jail, where, most said, Afghan authorities beat them. Idema’s former prisoners said the FBI came and asked many of the same questions Idema had. They were released after 15 days.

Idema and TFS-7, on the other hand, were charged with kidnapping, having a private jail, torture, robbery, and entering Afghanistan without a visa. They were facing up to 20 years in an Afghan prison. The FBI, meanwhile, was busy combing through Idema’s computers, videotapes, photographs, and documents, all of which were handed over to the bureau by the NDS.

A Kangaroo Court

On the trial’s opening day, a gaunt Idema pleaded his case to the international press, which wouldn’t prove very sympathetic, despite the fact that Caraballo was a noncombatant and an award-winning journalist himself.

“The American authorities absolutely condoned us and absolutely supported us,” Idema said. “We were in touch with the Department of Defense every day, at the highest level.” He said he could prove this with tape recordings and e-mails and that Afghan and U.S. officials would testify on his behalf.

It was an optimistic statement, considering that the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. military in Afghanistan had all denied any connection with Idema, whom they characterized as a freelance bounty hunter working outside the law. Afghan government officials kept their mouths shut.

As the prosecutor, Muhammad Naeem Dawari, laid out his case, it quickly became clear he wasn’t too worried about Idema’s defense. None of the Americans were given copies of the charges against them in English; translation was deplorable; and Bennett never got a lawyer. The prosecutor based his entire argument on the unsworn testimony of three of TFS-7’s detainees and a New York Times article. One of Idema’s victims, Siddiq, was an acquaintance of presiding judge Abdul Daset Bakhtiari and even met privately with him numerous times during the trial.

Idema got his first break a day after the trial began when Major Jon Siepmann, a U.S. military spokesman, said at a press conference that, on May 3, Idema “showed up at our doorstep with a person of interest and we took that individual from him.” This directly contradicted earlier statements made by the U.S. military.

An even bigger contradiction came at the second hearing, when Idema complained that the FBI was holding all his evidence. That afternoon an unidentified Afghan man entered the court and handed a small cardboard box filled with papers to Dawari, who said the parcel had come from the FBI—an entity that has no jurisdiction in Afghanistan.

“What in God’s name was the FBI doing holding a box of evidence for 21 days?” John Tiffany, Idema’s lawyer, would later ask.

One piece of evidence that should have proved that both U.S. and Afghan officials knew about Idema’s operation appeared on August 23, when a riveted courtroom watched the videotaped interrogation of Sakhi, in which he tells the camera that Qanuni and Fahim were targets of an assassination plot. More videos showed Idema meeting with Qanuni, Afghan NDS, and Defense Ministry soldiers who were assisting him—clearly establishing his connections with local authorities. Still another video showed ISAF bomb experts finding explosives in the houses Idema had targeted.

But it was the last tape shown at the last hearing in September that connected all the dots. It appeared that Lieutenant General Boykin’s office may indeed have been Idema’s sponsor, and now wanted to cut him loose.

“We passed on all your information to the J-2 staff [Pentagon intelligence] here and to the DIA,” says a voice on the other end of the phone call from Idema. “And we were trying to protect our boss from getting associated with it because he does not need any other scrutiny right now by the press. So we are trying to put a firewall between your efforts and him because we did not want to connect anything there. And there is no need to do that.”

Despite that evidence, Bakhtiari returned after 15 minutes of deliberation with a five-page handwritten ruling and sentenced Idema and Bennett to 10 years, Caraballo to eight, and the TFS-7 Afghans to no more than five.

“I apologize that we saved these people,” Idema screamed to the crowd afterward. “We should have let the fucking Taliban murder every goddamn one of them.”

Later that day the U.S. Embassy’s spokeswoman, Beth Lee, would say only that, “The government held the trial fairly and in accordance with the Afghan law,” a statement that was echoed in Washington, D.C. by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

The Prisoner

About a week after the trial, I went to Pul-e-Charkhi prison and visited Idema. It had been a horrible place of death and suffering during the Communist and Taliban eras. But I was pleasantly surprised when, through the bars of blue metal gates outside, I saw Idema directing TFS-7 in the soaping and rinsing of their newly arrived secondhand blue carpet.

After seven nights in his new home, he had color in his cheeks. Caraballo and Bennett also came to greet me, and all of them seemed happy. We were shown into a first-floor office, where we took our seats in metal chairs. Soft drinks, a kettle of tea, and candies appeared on the coffee table.

As the prison wardens had no idea I was a reporter, I handed Idema my notebook to take notes as if he were jotting a list of groceries.

Idema told me the three of them were moved their first night in prison because guards had learned Al Qaeda inmates were plotting to kill them. Some of the Northern Alliance commanders had ordered the chief warden to give TFS-7 whatever they needed. On the second day of their stay, new pillows and blankets were brought in. Idema said chairs and tables were being sent. They were eating meat once a week.

Idema then began to tell me he was trying to file an expedited appeal and was now going to play the legal game the Afghan way. He said he had already paid $75,000 in lawyers’ fees to get a high-class Afghan prison cell. Their own guards were treating them with deference; they considered TFS-7 heroes and seemed mystified as to why they were in prison.

Idema seemed to think the FBI, jealous of his success, had instigated TFS-7’s arrest, appropriated his evidence, and leaned on the Afghan government to railroad him. That, combined with the fact that one of his terrorist suspects was a supreme court judge with high-level connections, had accounted for the release of his suspects. Finally, fearing another Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Department of Defense had left him in the wind.

It sounded like a conspiracy theory, except that so far almost everything Idema told me had proved to be true.

When asked why he hadn’t done more to help himself by identifying his contacts in the Department of Defense, Idema replied in true secret agent fashion: “They’re more important than I am. It’s more important that they continue doing what they’re doing for America. I’m expendable.”