The
continuing saga of Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema, bounty
hunter and vigilante extraordinaire in a theatrical sort
of way, lurched from
the merely absurd, and occasionally
farcical, to the surreal this week as his trial got
under way in Afghanistan.
Idema is the
ringleader of a trio of Americans arrested in Kabul for
conducting a self-appointed, freelance so-called
counter-terrorism mission that included holding eight
Afghans in a private jail. He faces charges of
kidnapping, imprisoning and torturing Afghans.
The two other Americans are Edward Caraballo, a
cameraman who was making a documentary, and Brett
Bennett, another former soldier. Four Afghans employed
by Idema are also on trial.
Ironically,
Caraballo was part of a TV movie team that has been
struggling since 1994 to tell and sell Idema's life
story. The project's working title was "Loose Cannon:
The Keith Idema Story".
Idema is a, barely,
former Green Beret. After three years' service more than
20 years ago he was ordered never to re-enlist again. He
claims to have links with Afghan militia forces. He
first appeared in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001 when
US and allied Afghan forces routed the Taliban. He made
a living offering his services to Western television
networks, including a videotape showing a purported
al-Qaeda training facility near Kabul, and later
prominently featured in a top-selling, albeit highly
sensational and somewhat ludicrous, book by Robin Moore
called The Hunt for bin Laden.
Idema has
been called colorful, but that does not begin to do him
justice. Bloggers such as Flogging the Simian who have
followed his career closely note that his past
achievements, to name just a few, include claiming proof
of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection; miraculously finding
evidence that al-Qaeda was planning to assassinate then
US president Bill Clinton; and running, with his
girlfriend, a business called "Special Operations
Exposition & Trade Show Inc", for which he was
convicted of defrauding companies of about US$270,000
worth of merchandise. The two of them set up a series of
false companies to get credit in order to get supplies
to send to their customers. Idema served prison time for
that, which seems appropriate considering he now faces
up to 20 years' imprisonment in Afghanistan.
Calling Idema a glory hound understates the
case. His need for publicity seems almost pathological.
He has assiduously courted attention from the news media
and has appeared in interviews on major networks,
including CBS's 60 Minutes II and Fox News, and
was even a news analyst for the latter for a time. He
also received a 2001 National Press Club award for
online journalism.
Now meet Robert Young Pelton,
an adventurer who makes it a habit of going where most
people fear to tread, ie, war and conflict zones. Pelton
is the author of the well-known travel guide World's
Most Dangerous Places and host of a show by the same
name on the Discovery network. He is also the author of
an upcoming book on private military contractors, due
out next year from Crown Books.
In his travels
Pelton has been in Afghanistan many times, for both
National Geographic and CNN, and is familiar with the
saga of Idema. He has reason to be.
After US
forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001, Pelton scored the
first interview with wanna-be jihadi Johnny Walker
Lindh. Subsequently, Lindh's lawyers tried to convince
the US court where Lindh was tried that Pelton was a
government agent.
According to Pelton, National
Geographic TV was supposed to send him into Afghanistan,
but aborted the gig when Gary Scurka, the producer, was
wounded. But it appears that Idema claimed the TV crew
was actually "contracting officers from the Defense
Department".
Pelton says Idema entered the
country because of the National Geographic gig and spent
months trying to convince people he was a government
spy. In an e-mail from his California home, Pelton
wrote, "And to make it sillier ... I was shooting a doco
[documentary] on looking for [Osama] bin laden with the
CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and Task Force 121 in
the tribal areas and Idema was shooting a doco of him
playing whack a mole with Pashtuns in Kabul looking for
bin laden."
This week, Pelton said he has
obtained a document dated November 2, 2001. It is a
letter from the US Embassy in Tashkent to the Uzbek
Foreign Affairs Office to obtain a four-year
multiple-entry visa on behalf of three individuals. One
is Idema, the other is National Geographic cameraman
Scurka, and the other is a non-governmental-organization
staffer and former US military person.
Idema and
Scurka were working for the National Geographic
Television Division and had flown to Uzbekistan without
visas. Idema lied to the embassy and it phoned an active
military person who vouched for Idema, probably not
knowing that Idema had lied about the real purpose of
their trip (claiming that he wanted to make a
documentary).
In an e-mail that Pelton sent from
his home he notes that the important thing is this
letter from the US Embassy, which describes them as
"contracting officers from the Defense Department who
arrived to the Republic of Uzbekistan for an official
trip".
Pelton says Idema then used those letters
and what appears to be falsified or modified military ID
to convince the Afghan commanders and other people of
his official status.
So the Pentagon is right
when it says it had not sanctioned the activities of
Idema and his colleagues. It appears it was the State
Department that sanctioned him by providing a visa, even
if it was obtained by his lying.
Pelton wrote,
"I can tell you that the DoD [Department of Defense] and
the people I associate with have known about Idema and
have been looking to apprehend him for at least
three-and-half years."
David Isenberg,
a senior analyst with the Washington-based British
American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a
wide background in arms-control and national-security
issues. The views expressed are his own.
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the merely absurd, and occasionally
farcical, to the surreal this week as his trial got
under way in Afghanistan. 
