(Christian Science Monitor)  From my first days in captivity I'd seen evidence that they weren't just kidnappers but also insurgents actively conducting attacks. They didn't much bother trying to hide their firearms and explosives.

For instance, one morning at the location I knew as the mujahideen clubhouse I awoke to find fresh dirt in the bathroom, dirt in the shower, and dirt in the washing machine. I didn't think much of it. Maybe they were washing their shoes.

But I quickly learned that the appearance of dirt meant that someone in the house had been out planting bombs - IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, the mujahideen weapon of choice. I knew from my reporting, and the time I spent embedded with US Marines, that IEDs were now responsible for about half of all US combat deaths in Iraq.

Not all their explosives were offensive weapons. At least one of my guards - Abu Hassan, a serious man - wore a suicide vest inside the clubhouse.

One night, he was leaning over a little gas-powered stove, cooking eggs and potatoes in oil, and then he sat back and pushed the open flame away, saying something like, "Oh, have to be careful!"

The suicide vest was under his shirt, sort of swinging back and forth. He was afraid the fire would ignite the explosives. And if it did, we'd all be dead.

He used to complain about how heavy it was. He'd wear it at night. He would mime for me what would happen if soldiers came, showing how he'd put it on, with shoulder straps, and then how two wires would connect. Then he would move his hands outward in a big motion indicating an explosion, look upward, and go, "BOOM!"

***

The prospect of help from Sheikh Gaood raised hopes at the Monitor's offices in Boston at a time when other tracks of investigation seemed to be drying up. But it quickly became a serious source of tension at the paper and among the US agencies who were supposedly cooperating to find Jill.

The Monitor's Baghdad correspondents Scott Peterson and Dan Murphy didn't trust Gaood's motives. Was Gaood trying to win favor with the US government - as it investigated violations of the UN oil-for-food sanctions program? And the FBI wasn't happy about it either. They wanted to keep Gaood out of the picture.

U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, on the other hand, said that Gaood had indeed been a powerful figure under Saddam Hussein. And, the CIA's report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction described Gaood as "linked" to an insurgent network near Fallujah that "actively sought chemical weapons for use against Coalition forces" in 2004. It was possible he had the contacts to release Jill, they said, but there were no guarantees.

Which government agency was right? How should the Monitor advise the Carroll family? And how much should the Monitor invest in pursuing this track?

According to intelligence sources, the CIA checked with the FBI, the lead agency in the Carroll case, before providing the Monitor with more background on Gaood. The FBI replied with a blistering e-mail: the CIA should stay in its own lane, and stop talking to the Monitor about the Carroll case. (Today, the FBI says no such message was sent. But Gaood "was assessed as a complete 'X' factor, which means undemonstrated credibility," says FBI spokesman Richard Kolko.)

To try and settle this intergovernmental dispute, Bergenheim called Mr. Mueller, the head of the FBI. You asked if we were getting the help we needed, he said, in effect. Well, we aren't.

The FBI response? The Monitor was given two new, higher-level contacts within the bureau, but from then on the paper's editor was given less information about the government's efforts in the case.

Bergenheim decided to tell the Carroll family about the Barak/Gaood connection. Bad move, said the Baghdad Boys. But on Feb. 9, Jim and Mary Beth Carroll went on "Good Morning America" and asked for the help of the "powerful sheikh," without naming him.

A few days later, Gaood issued a statement from his exile in Jordan, calling for Jill's release to prove that the Iraqi insurgency "does not kill innocents."

Nothing happened. And the days dragged on.

- P.G.

***

There was no mistaking that the mujahideen who held me hated America. "One day, hopefully, one day, America, all of America gone," said one of my guards early in my captivity. He spread his hands out wide as if to wipe America off the map.

"I don't quite understand," I said. "All America?"

My female jailer Um Ali, listening in on the conversation, translated the sentiment into simpler Arabic for me. "No journalists, no people, no nothing," she said.

I could also see that Shiites were high on their list of enemies. Once, when attempting to explain the historical split between Sunnis and Shiites, Abu Nour, the leader of my captors, stopped himself after he referred to "Shiite Muslims."

"No, they are not Muslims," Ink Eyes said. "Anyone who asks for things from people that are dead, and not [from] Allah, he is not a Muslim."

He was referring to Shiites appealing to long-dead Islamic leaders to intercede with God, asking for miracles such as curing the sick. It's a practice similar to that of Catholics praying to saints.

But after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya Shrine, and rampant Sunni-Shiite killing, nearly every captor I came into contact with would tell me about their hate for Shiites first. Abu Nour now simply referred to them as "dogs."

***

The Monitor and the family still talked almost every day, but they had less to say to each other. There were fewer leads and less information to share.
In Baghdad, a new case officer from the British security consultants had arrived and was proving difficult to work with. Correspondents Murphy and Peterson were irritated by prodding from Boston to rotate out for a rest.

Neither Peterson nor Murphy considered themselves particularly religious. But as Peterson notes, "there are no atheists in foxholes." From the beginning, he drew strength from the book of Psalms, and this passage: "Truth brings the elements of liberty. The power of God brings deliverance to the captive," written by Mary Baker Eddy, who founded this paper.



By Jill Carroll and Peter Grier
© 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.