By Emmanuel Ogebe
In part one, I gave the historic context of how the heroic trifecta of CNN media proof-of-life expose,’ the dramatic escape of Chibok girl Amina Ali and global #bbog activism led to the first mass freed girls in 2016 and not the CIA. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/TAjzbN4hN3Hixx33/?mibextid=WC7FNe
In part two, I will show from the book itself 10 reasons why claims that the CIA rescued 30 Chibok girls are not credible. According to the book “The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA” by Liza Mundy: “276 female students had been kidnapped from a Christian boarding school in Chibok.”
- One thing universally known about the School is that it was a “Government Girls Secondary School.” It literally says so on the name! It was not a “Christian boarding school.” In fact the U.S. government at the time was intentionally denying the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. How is it possible that the CIA which publishes a world acclaimed fact file got a notorious fact that even Wikipedia reports correctly so wrong?
- “Boko Haram at that time was an ad hoc and strident boys’ club, a homegrown group of religious extremists opposed to literacy and schooling.” How could the CIA describe Boko Haram as an “ad hoc boys club” after it had bombed the United Nations in Abuja in 2011 and just been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the US government in 2013 pursuant to my advocacy? How could it be “homegrown” when allied with global jihadists such as Alqaeda, Alshaabab, Al Nusra?
- “In late 2016, Boko Haram franchised with ISIS…making it a legitimate target for a counterterrorism mission. The group was in a godforsaken section of North Nigeria; there was a single CIA case officer in the region, but he needed a team, and that’s where Molly came in. Molly was sent to a very poor region near Lake Chad, where residents subsisted on farming and fishing… Maiduguri, her destination, was a tiny city— mostly slums—-near the Sambisa Forest.”
Anyone with a knowledge of Northern Nigeria would be shocked at this description of the largest city in the northeast. Or anyone with google maps aerial view. In another bizarre claim, the book says Boko Haram only became a count terrorism threat in late 2016 when it merged with ISIS years after the Chibok abductions. Is the CIA truly saying there was only one case officer there all this time and President Obama lied when he announced a multi-disciplinary Task Force to find the girls in 2014? - “Her job was to set up a safe house..She found a compound with… no electricity, no running water, no computer system, no secure coms. Molly got one support officer, a woman, who helped set things up. Nobody took U.S. dollars, so Molly had to find a money changer who wouldn’t rip her off.
She bought a generator, arranged for fuel deliveries.. She bought a car, tinted the windows herself, smoothing the tinting plastic with a Starbucks gift card.”
Again while poor electricity is a given in Nigeria, most cities like Maiduguri have compounds with boreholes providing water supply. The huge presence of international aid workers has created the largest foreign exchange market in the North outside the capital Abuja.
Most of the tasks could have been done by locals and did not require any specialist skill that risked the life of a CIA officer. Using a Starbucks gift card to tint a car’s windows was interesting as there’s no Starbucks in Nigeria. Molly had been on multiple deployments abroad likely in countries with no Starbucks either…
Besides, Nigerian police require a license to operate a vehicle with tinted glass. - “In case of emergency, nobody would be coming to help her. Molly had a Glock 19 and thirty rounds of ammunition: twenty-nine for the enemy, and one for her…”
But more importantly, anyone with a basic understanding of Pax Americana knows that the USA does not leave U.S. citizens behind willynilly. This year, I exclusively revealed that US military special ops rescued Americans and Canadians kidnapped by Fulani bandits in Kaduna just as they did Phil Walton in Sokoto in 2020. The very notion that the CIA would leave a single white female with an inadequate supply of ammunition in a terror hotspot is frankly unAmerican. - “Having set up the safe house for the support staff who would join the operation, Molly next had to penetrate Boko Haram. She cultivated an asset who told her that Abubakar Shekau—the head of Boko Haram— attended a mosque that looked “like stairs.” A team member from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency found a building with a “stair” shape footprint, using overhead imagery.”
It is ludicrous that Shekau who released videos that painstakingly left no clues on his location except where he disclosed it was foolish enough to attend a particular and identifiable mosque.
Secondly he was in the Sambisa Forest. So, how would a satellite have picked a mosque hidden in 518Km of forest? - “She had her targeter…a signals intelligence guy who listened to Boko and ISIS West Africa intercepts. Working with the British and French, they hoped to get all the girls in one fell swoop, but some had been married off to fighters and were reluctant or unable to leave their babies, at least not right away. But they did get thirty at one time, and others, in ones and twos, trickling, terrified, from the thick forest, clutching the offspring of the men they’d been given to.”
First, the book claims after ISIS merged with Boko Haram in late 2016 and became a counterterrorism priority, the CIA then set up shop shop to work with the British and French to rescue 30 girls.
However the fact is that 21 Chibok girls were released in October 2016 after months of painstaking planning in a prisoner exchange and ransom deal brokered by the Swiss and facilitated by the Red Cross.
Therefore if the US only made this a CT priority after the ISWA franchise occured in late 2016, then the release of the 21 girls had already been consummated by the Swiss even before Molly was dispatched with 30 bullets, $100,000 and a Starbucks gift card to search for a safe house! - Similarly from above, it is stated that the rescue operation was based on communication intercepts. However the facts are that it was actually a release brokered by third party negotiators. Interestingly a component of President Obama’s announced multidisciplinary taskforce in 2014 included hostage negotiators but the CIA story implies that was non-existent before them.
- Another claim in addition to the imaginary 30 girls the CIA helped rescue, is that more girls were rescued on an individual basis.
It is one thing to try and claim credit for the work of Swiss interlocutors but it is truly a new low to take away from the courage of the girls who escaped themselves.
Amina Ali was the first to escape on her own with her baby in May 2016 before the safe house was ever conceived of and Maryam Ali Maiyanga in November next before it was established.
Therefore if there was any individual girl rescued during the takeoff of the CIA Safe House, it would be in the period of 2017. However the only girl recorded recovered individually that year is Rakiya Gali Abubakar (January 5, 2017.)
By far the most cruel assertion to my mind in the book is the claim that some of the girls didn’t want to come back. Does the CIA really want parents to believe they met their captive daughters and had an opportunity to bring them back but left them there because the Chibok girls said they didn’t want to be rescued?
- One final point is the complexity of international geopolitics. I had faulted Obama’s use of U.S. hostage negotiators given the U.S. notorious non-negotiation policy and preferred France given their success in freeing French captives (The Swiss were a good compromise.)So from both a military or negotiated standpoint, the U.S. simply did not play the role claimed in the girls’ rescues.
I appreciate that author Liza Mundy is giving voice to documents she’s accessed and interviews but probably obtained clearances before publishing. She and The CIA itself should be the first to clarify this story because it does not acquit them credibly or creditably.
Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq is a prominent U.S.-based international human rights lawyer in Washington exiled to America after abduction and torture by Dictator Abacha for protesting the assassination of pro-democracy icon Kudirat Abiola over the Nigerian 1993 election. Mr. Ogebe played a role in shaping US Congressional and foreign policy in Nigeria’s quest for a stable democracy.
Mr. Ogebe has been a guest speaker at university campuses across the US and on radio and TV programs around the world, e.g. CNN, Fox, Al Jazeera, BBC, the Geneva Summit, the United Nations, the World Bank, the Canadian Parliament etc. His decades of advocacy led to the naming of Kudirat corner by Nigeria house in New York (1998), the US designations of Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (2013) and Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (2020) and International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s determination of crimes against humanity in Nigeria (2020) amongst others.
He was consulted by Presidents Clinton (2000) and Bush’s Administrations (2003)on their visits to Nigeria.
He currently serves as Special Counsel for the Justice for Jos Project, a pro bono initiative of his firm, which has worked for 15 years to garner international attention to the horrific crimes against humanity in Nigeria on behalf of persecuted minorities. He provides assistance to survivors, widows and orphans, refugees & IDPs of terror.
Mr Ogebe is also a recipient of U.S. President‘s Bronze Volunteer Award for his pro bono work serving in northern Nigeria, the “Hero of the Year” Award by the Darfur Women Action Group and awards from Diaspora groups in Maryland and New Jersey as well as official US State and local recognitions in Florida, Arkansas and New Jersey amongst others.
Emmanuel Ogebe is a formidable Nigerian human rights lawyer in Diaspora advocating in multiple continents including Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and the middleast. His dogged defense of a Nigerian citizen, trafficked abroad and sentenced to death, pro bono for 15 years led to victory at Indonesia’s Supreme Court which freed him in December 2023.
Additional Resources
Screenshot from The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy, New York: Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House