United States–Jordan intelligence cooperation

United States–Jordan intelligence cooperation in Guantánamo Diary is not a distant policy abstraction: it shapes Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s movement between prisons, the circulation of investigative material, and the interrogation network that follows him across borders. Jordanian intelligence services interrogated him for seven and a half months after a CIA plane transferred him from Mauritania to Amman in November 2001. His account places that detention within a wider partnership in which Jordanian officers questioned people inside and outside Jordan, worked alongside United States personnel, and helped conduct the United States’ counterterrorism operations. The cooperation was extensive, but the book also exposes its uneven information flows and the secrecy surrounding its practice.

From questioning to transfer

Before his transfer, Mohamedou Ould Slahi had already been detained and questioned in connection with the Millennium Plot. In January 2000, on his return to Mauritania after years abroad, Senegalese police and then Mauritanian authorities detained him at the behest of the United States; Federal Bureau of Investigation agents questioned him, and authorities released him on February 19 after concluding there was no basis to believe he was involved. He was questioned again in Mauritania in September 2001 and released, with Mauritanian authorities publicly affirming his innocence. These earlier episodes establish a sequence of United States interest and questioning, but not proof of his involvement in the plot.

On November 20, 2001, Mauritanian police asked him to accompany them for further questioning, and he complied, driving his own car to the station. Eight days later, a CIA rendition plane transported him to a prison in Amman. That transfer shifted his detention into a system in which Jordanian intelligence services conducted the interrogation. On July 19, 2002, another CIA plane retrieved him and flew him to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The sequence makes cooperation visible through the handover itself: United States personnel arranged his movement, while Jordanian authorities held and questioned him during the intervening months.

The secrecy extended beyond the prisoner’s immediate circumstances. In early 2002, even Mohamedou’s family did not know that he was in Jordan, and few people knew that the United States was operating a rendition and interrogation program with the assistance of allies. The account describes Mauritania as another cooperating partner, making Jordan part of a broader network rather than an isolated arrangement. Secrecy was therefore not incidental to the relationship: it helped keep the transfer and detention beyond ordinary public awareness.

Interrogation and operational roles

Mohamedou’s account describes Jordanian interrogators working alongside Americans from the beginning of the Global War Against Terrorism, questioning people both in Jordan and abroad. He says Jordanian agents operated in Afghanistan and that American authorities relied on Jordanian expertise. He also describes a Jordanian official who played a significant role in United States operations: the official was responsible for interrogating people delivered to Jordan and assigning them to members of his team, and later came to Guantánamo to question detainees on behalf of the United States. The cooperation thus involved more than receiving a prisoner; it included personnel with roles extending across detention sites and national jurisdictions.

In Jordan, three interrogators were assigned to Mohamedou. The interrogators sometimes questioned him separately about the same subject, a method he understood as a way of checking whether his answers changed. One interrogator used a file supplied by the United States and moved rapidly among questions, while another team member led the group. Mohamedou also recounts that an interrogator showed him another detainee’s photograph and promised that information about the man would close his case and send him home. He recognized the promise as false. These episodes reveal how United States-provided material and Jordanian questioning could meet in the same room, while the detainee had little basis for knowing what each agency knew or intended.

The material sent across borders included the contents of Mohamedou’s computer hard drive. He says the Federal Bureau of Investigation confiscated the drive when he surrendered in Mauritania and that its contents were sent to Jordan with him. He contrasts this with the United States Department of Defense’s efforts to obtain the disk, questioning why the Federal Bureau of Investigation appeared to cooperate more with a foreign service than with another United States agency. That is his interpretation of the institutional arrangement, not a complete account of agency decision-making. Still, the detail makes the partnership concrete: cooperation involved not only a person’s transfer but also the movement of investigative material between agencies.

Shared practices and institutional limits

Mohamedou presents Jordanian interrogation as part of a wider United States-supported counterterrorism structure. In his assessment, Jordanian services had experience conducting interrogations and were relied upon by American authorities; he also argues that United States officials eventually took more of the coercive work into their own hands. His account places that shift within an evolving relationship, rather than portraying the two governments’ roles as fixed or identical. The description is the detainee’s analysis of the system he experienced, and should be distinguished from the documented facts of his transfer and detention.

The account also describes cooperation as uneven across United States agencies. Although a CIA plane took Mohamedou from Mauritania to Jordan and later removed him from Amman, the CIA apparently did not provide its interrogation intelligence to the Guantánamo prosecution team. Marine prosecutor Stuart Couch later said that the CIA showed him no intelligence reports of its own; most reports shared with him came from Mohamedou’s later questioning at Guantánamo. Couch inferred that the earlier interrogation may not have produced information demonstrating the significance the CIA had expected. His conclusion is an inference, not a disclosed account of the CIA’s decision. The episode nevertheless complicates any assumption that operational collaboration automatically produced comprehensive intelligence-sharing within the United States government.

Evidence, continuity, and significance

The book’s account can be read alongside later documentary investigations, but the evidentiary boundaries matter. In its discussion of the Guantánamo interrogation, it describes how an investigator working for Couch obtained access to military interrogators’ files, including detailed daily memoranda recording what was said and how information was extracted. Those records remained classified; the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Justice Department review later summarized them. Their findings documented a separate, Rumsfeld-approved special interrogation plan and included records supporting aspects of Mohamedou’s account. This material corroborates parts of the larger detention narrative, but it does not by itself establish every detail of the earlier Jordanian interrogation or the full terms of United States–Jordan cooperation.

The relationship’s significance lies in the chain it made possible: United States interest in Mohamedou preceded his transfer; Jordanian intelligence services held and interrogated him; United States agencies supplied material and arranged his onward removal; and the subsequent Guantánamo process did not necessarily receive all intelligence generated during the Jordanian detention. The book therefore presents cooperation both as practical coordination across borders and as an opaque division of responsibility. The resulting gap between custody, questioning, and later prosecutorial knowledge is central to understanding the system: a detainee could pass through several allied hands while the institutions involved retained different records, different access, and different accounts of what had been learned.