Courtesy of Barack Obama.
Via Daily Beast:
The summers in Doha are so unbearably hot, few people venture out on the streets during daylight hours. As I set out from my hotel to scour Doha for the five Taliban commanders released from Guantanamo Bay, I knew that the odds of running into them were against me.
I was in Doha this week with a group of diplomats, experts, and officials who gathered at the glitzy Ritz Carlton for a conference on U.S. relations with the Muslim world, hosted by the Washington-based Brookings Institution and funded in part by the Qatari foreign ministry. Most conference attendees never left the hotel, save for a meal or two at one of Doha’s ornate tourist destinations. But I was on a mission. I was determined to justify taking four days to schmooze in the Gulf by bringing home a big catch; I would find the Taliban Five or their luxury Doha compound and pose some questions to them, whether they were happy to see me or not. […]
One conference attendee told me he had spoken with a masseur who had visited the Taliban Five at their new home, a fascinating bit of information that was more than a simple lead. The Taliban Five are bringing in masseurs? After 12 years of confinement, it’s hard to call that luxurious. But it didn’t seem to fit with their hard-line stereotypes. Alas, the masseur was ultimately unreachable.
Another conference-goer told me the former Qatari ambassador to Washington was in the hotel and knew the exact location of the Taliban Five. Being a very senior official with close ties to the Obama administration, he would definitely have been involved in the details of the deal. But knowing what I was planning to ask him, my source refused to make the introduction.