Title: S1E15 The Hunt Begins
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-02-16
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a5c6df6349d3c6e3f350a/media.mp3
Duration: 0:40:07

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[00:30] This podcast is a casted in touchstone production I'm John Curiockes Welcome to the Dead Clip What makes a spy tick? This is another episode in our series What makes this spy tick? I hope you've been following along from the start This is one of those podcast series That's telling a story with a beginning, a middle and an end In the world of spying, not knowing the whole story

[01:02] That's the thing that catches up with you in the end Of course, however you're enjoying the podcast In whatever order if there is an order We thank you for listening Seriously And we especially thank you for liking, reviewing, sharing and recommending the podcast We have grown exponentially in just the last couple of weeks And that's all thanks to you We appreciate it Now where were we? Ah, right, Pakistan My girlfriend at the time, another CIA officer Met me at my apartment to help me pack for an assignment that might last a week

[01:35] Or a month or a year I had no idea There's a reason the agency encouraged people within the agency To keep the entirety of their lives within the agency Before I get on that plane for Pakistan Let me tell you a little bit about dating at the CIA The CIA culture is such that they encourage CIA romances And they do that because both parties are cleared for top secret information That way you don't get in trouble when you accidentally let something slip over dinner

[02:10] Or while you're laying in bed at night You can talk about work And it's not just dating that the CIA wants you to do It's pretty much everything For years when I was at the CIA I was a member of a softball team in the CIA softball league If you are interested in music, there's a CIA choir There's a CIA band There's a CIA chamber orchestra They even have things like CIA knitting clubs A CIA LGBTQ organization

[02:41] Literally anything that you want to do in your off time You can do it through the CIA Looking back on my very first day at the CIA My boss was walking me around Just pointing out the important offices That's where the cafeteria is That's where the gym is That's where the supply room is That kind of thing He took me into the lobby of the atrium That separated the new headquarters building And the old headquarters building There was an office there in the atrium

[03:11] Completely surrounded by glass And it had different windows inside of it And one window said health insurance Right? So he said that's where you go If you have any questions about your health insurance That other window is where you go When you want to buy tickets to see the Washington Redskins Or the Baltimore Orioles Washington didn't have a baseball team at the time And then at the very end There was a window for elder care Or if you had trouble with alcohol

[03:41] You could talk to them And he pointed at that window and he said Don't ever go there In fact, don't ever go in that office at all Unless you're going in to buy baseball or football tickets I said why not? He said because this looks like a harmless little Help window and it's not This office is run by the counterintelligence center Not by HR Not by benefits And he said if you go in there and you say I think I have a drinking problem I think I have a drug problem

[04:12] I think I'm depressed because my parents are old And I'm having trouble taking care of them That is a counterintelligence issue You will be suspended You will lose your security clearance You will never work in classified government ever again Stay out of that office Counterintelligence really is spying on spies They just don't want people to fall out of line Even when you don't mean to fall out of line You just need a little bit of help

[04:42] But in any event Whatever you want to do in life You can do it in the CIA I got out of the car at Dulles airport And I went to the United Airlines ticket counter Back in those days you couldn't self check Your bags, you had to go up to the counter Show your passport and tell them where you were going I walk up to the counter and the guy says Good morning and where are you headed today? Islamabad And with a very low voice he said Better thee than me But thank you for what you're doing

[05:14] And I had to chuckle because I remember thinking Between 9-11 or really 9-12 And January of 2002 Which is when I was finally getting on this plane I wondered how many men For the most part, almost exclusively Wearing blue jeans And carrying black diplomatic passports And going to places like Tajikistan Or Uzbekistan Or Kyrgyzstan

[05:44] Or Pakistan How many had passed through this guy's line He knew exactly who we were And he was glad that it wasn't him In those days you couldn't fly directly To the Persian Gulf Nowadays Boeing 777s will take you to Dubai Or Doha And you could pretty much go anywhere in the world From there But back then I had to fly from Washington to London London to Kuwait And Kuwait to Islamabad And I finally arrived in Islamabad at 4 o'clock in the morning

[06:15] Minus my luggage, I'll add Which somehow managed to take a tour in London I arrived with literally nothing Except a handful of magazines that I had brought on board with me An embassy driver picked me up again at 4 o'clock in the morning Now the airport in Islamabad is not actually in Islamabad It's in a nearby city called Rawalpindi Islamabad is a pre-planned city That was created in 1947 It is absolutely beautiful It's on a grid pattern

[06:46] Everything is either a right or a left You don't get confused, you don't get turned around The government buildings are beautiful Everything is modern Rawalpindi is as grim a place as I've ever seen in my life It's about 20 times the size of Islamabad It has millions and millions of people It's also the home of the Pakistani military I ended up being something of a regular in Rawalpindi Because it also had a large jail Which I made very good use of while I was there

[07:17] So when the driver took me to the hotel I said, whoa, wait a minute, where are you taking me? He said, you're going to stay at the Marriott I said, I'm not staying at the Marriott Well, why not? Everybody stays at the Marriott Buddy, what's the one hotel in town That Al Qaeda is going to blow up when they have a chance? It's going to be the Marriott I'm not staying at the Marriott Well, it's already five in the morning by now He needs to pick me up at seven to go into work

[07:48] Why don't you go in, sleep a couple of hours We can change the hotel I said, okay, fine I'm glad that I did that because about six weeks later They actually did blow up the Marriott Killed dozens of people It created a 30-foot deep crater From a truck bomb in front of the hotel I ended up moving to a small 14-room guest house The CIA won't allow me to tell you the name of it But it was a perfect match for me And pretty much for everybody else who was working on counterterrorism and Islam about at the time

[08:21] When I landed, I honestly didn't know anything about the job that I was walking into Okay, I know I'm going to be the chief of counterterrorism operations Exactly does that mean? Are there already ongoing counterterrorism operations? Or am I going to have to start from scratch? I had no idea So I told the driver, I said, please, I'm begging you, just give me one extra hour Pick me up at eight instead of seven I don't sleep on planes I've been up for like 36 hours already I feel like I'm going to pass out

[08:51] He said, fine I had already checked out of the Marriott So he swung by at a quarter to eight Picked me up and took me into the embassy The embassy in Islamabad, it's not where the United States Embassy is now It's an older embassy and we've torn it down But at the time it was in the diplomatic quarter The DQ was where almost all of the foreign embassies were located There was a DQ in Riyadh And I kind of disliked being shunted away in a ghetto, so to speak

[09:23] It was a very nice ghetto, but it was still a ghetto In Islamabad, you want to be in a ghetto Because it protects you from people just driving by and opening fire on your building Or people just driving truck bombs in front of your building Running away and then blowing you to smithereens So the diplomatic quarter in Islamabad was protected It was protected by the Pakistani military and the Pakistani police You had to show an ID just to get into the DQ I had trouble getting to work literally every single day

[09:57] Because I have an olive complexion And Pakistanis just did not believe that I was an American So I show an American diplomatic passport I show an ID for the American embassy and still they would not allow me in I got to the point where I would swear at them using the filthiest language I could come up with And just drive through the roadblock After a while they just backed off and let me in But I got to the embassy that day right at 8 o'clock

[10:27] And I went into the chief's office to introduce myself He and I had met once before at the farm He had been the chief of the farm when I was there for counter-terrorism training We shook hands, he said I remember you from even before the training You were in the directorate of intelligence, weren't you? And I said yes, I was the Iraq leadership analyst And then briefly I was the assistant national intelligence officer for the Middle East And he said, right, I was the assistant national intelligence officer for the Middle East ten years earlier

[10:57] I said, right, and I remember you and I having a conversation about how nice it is To not be chasing bad guys all around the world that you just sit at your desk Think the big thoughts, write papers and then go home at the end of the day And he said, right So I knew he and I were going to get along, which we did In that meeting, that introductory meeting, he said to me Here's what I want you to do today I want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down a terrorist safe house And then, when you feel like you're ready, I want you to carry out that operation

[11:31] And I said, okay I went back to my office And when I say office, I don't want people to think that it's like an office that you see on TV You got fancy desk and nice pictures on the wall This was the kind of situation where we had three times as many people as the building was built for And you had to make do The counter-terrorism branch was made up of me and seven CIA retirees

[12:01] And I mean very senior level retirees Literally every single one of them had been at least the director or deputy director of near Eastern operations One of them had been the deputy director of the CIA for operations So these were very serious senior level people who out of a sense of patriotism had volunteered to come back as contractors after 9-11 I'll tell you in advance that I learned more from these guys in the six or seven months that I was in Pakistan

[12:35] That I learned cumulatively in the remainder of my career This was an incredible learning opportunity for me and I was determined to take it very seriously And so I sat down in this teeny tiny windowless office And when I say tiny, I mean it was like five feet by eight feet with no windows It had room only for a desk and a chair and that was it And then the guys were all crammed in an area almost as small that had just folding tables and chairs up against the folding tables

[13:07] I said guys I feel guilty taking this private office They were like no no you earned it, you go ahead and enjoy your seniority and they would all laugh That very morning sitting down at the desk in my little tiny office with a legal pad and a pen And I thought to myself what would I need if I were to carry out a counter-terrorism raid What would a counter-terrorism operation look like? And I remember at the very top of the paper I wrote 0-200, 2 o'clock in the morning

[13:38] I would want it to be dark, I would want everybody to be asleep Just so that that risk to my personal safety was as low as possible We were running these counter-terrorism operations out of Pakistan because at the same time that I'm arriving We are bombing the shit out of Torah Bora in eastern Afghanistan And Torah Bora is where the entire Al-Qaeda leadership had fled after 9-11 We knew that the only thing they could do to save themselves was to try to cross the border into Pakistan

[14:12] So what the CIA had done, it set up posts all along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border Where our officers were trying to catch them as they tried to enter Pakistan But if you've ever seen the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world Some of the highest mountains in the world, the deepest valleys, extremely hostile territory politically You're not going to get any help from the locals

[14:42] The locals are more likely to shoot you than they are to help you find Al-Qaeda Because they're all Pashtuns in that part of the country Pashtuns straddle both sides of the border So, you're essentially on your own I wrote 0-200 at the top of this paper And then I wrote CIA, FBI, ISI What I meant by that was, this was going to be an ongoing CIA-led operation With assistance from the FBI and from ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service

[15:14] Now, why the FBI? Because 9-11 was still an open criminal investigation It was an open case The idea was that were we to capture some of these senior Al-Qaeda leaders We would put them on trial in courts in the United States Specifically the Southern District of New York, the Western District of Pennsylvania The Eastern District of Virginia Where the crimes had been committed A couple of days after I sat with this legal pad

[15:44] I got a tip that there was an Al-Qaeda safe house in Islamabad And the tip came with an address So I went downstairs to the FBI They were on the first floor of the embassy I introduced myself around I'm the new CIA guy I'm the head of counter-terrorism operations Got a tip, wanted to know You guys want to come along We're going to bust the door down tonight Sure, they want to come along And I said, well, we're going to have to invite the Pakistanis Because it is their country, after all

[16:14] As much as we like to think we can do whatever we want And in many cases we can It's still their country And so we have to at least make them feel like they have a stake In the success of these operations So that night, we left the embassy at 1.30 in the morning We reconnoitered with the Pakistanis And right at 2 o'clock I kicked in the door And we grabbed two 19-year-old kids They immediately burst into tears And one of them asked if he could call his mom To tell her that he had been caught

[16:44] And I said, no, you can't call your mom They were both from Tunisia They had escaped from Torah Bora And just found that this house was vacant And so they broke in and they were squatting They didn't have any plan for what to do to get out They were just hoping that they could come up with something At the end of it So we grabbed them We turned them over to the Pakistanis The Pakistanis turned them over to the Pakistani police The police took them to the Raul Pindi jail I remember saying to one of my FBI colleagues

[17:14] That was too easy, right? It can't be this easy every time Oh my God! So went back to the embassy Wrote up my cable Mission successful Everybody returned safely Here's the name Here are the names of the two guys we caught Found their passports Here is the passport information And I get a cable back immediately Kudos to the team Good job, sleep well Before I get off this topic I will admit to you that this was very heady stuff

[17:46] I had gone down to the FBI office A little bit earlier in the evening And introduced myself to a guy named Tommy McHale Tommy became my closest friend And closest ally in Islamabad He was actually not an FBI agent He was a detective With the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Which owned the World Trade Center Tommy was almost killed In the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center And he suffered irreversible lung damage

[18:18] From the fallout On September 11th, he was in the World Trade Center When the attack took place And his best friend died there that morning At his best friend's funeral His friend's wife gave Tommy Her husband's handcuffs And she told him to go to Pakistan And catch these bastards On literally every operation that we did Tommy had his friend's handcuffs And he used them every time To take his prisoner into custody Tommy was a little bit older than I

[18:49] His health wasn't great because of that attack On the World Trade Center in 1993 And so we had this conversation Do you want to kick it in or do you want me to kick it in? No, you kick it in He had bad arthritis in his hands too And I said, okay, do I use my shoulder? He said, no, no, don't use your shoulder You'll break your shoulder if you do that Use your foot, but really put your leg into it Hard And then when they were in the 70s They just kind of shrugged

[19:19] They're not going to kick it in This is important for a reason That I'll tell you in a minute I kicked it in like on a TV show You kick it right at the latch And again, it splintered The door flung open These kids were sound asleep And then when we rushed into the house We're screaming, they're screaming They start crying They have their hands up in the air We put them on the ground We frisked them One was in his underwear So it was not cinematic The next day when the station chief Congratulated me

[19:50] He also gave me approval to just buy Whatever I needed to buy And so I went online to a website Called Gauls Gauls.com Gauls is a large police Supply house in Kentucky I bought tens of thousands Of dollars worth of equipment I bought battering rams I bought walkie-talkies That were scrambled I bought bulletproof vests Anything I could think of

[20:21] That we might need doing a raid I bought Gauls immediately Sent the goods to the diplomatic pouch And they were shipped out to me I had them in less than a week As soon as they arrived Just about the same day that the equipment arrived I get a call from a friendly But very lazy Arab intelligence chief In Islamabad And he said that a little bird Told him that I was the guy to go to With tip information on al-Qaeda

[20:52] And I said, yeah, why don't you come over to the embassy And want to have lunch? So he came over I took an immediate dislike to this guy He was a Brigadier General In his country's intelligence service Most of which are Sort of joint military civilian Organizations I could tell from the get-go That this guy was just afraid to do his own dirty work He was afraid for his safety And he thought, well, if the Americans are breaking down doors I'm just going to give it to them And so he said, I have some information That some very bad people are at this address

[21:24] Such and such a location And I said, okay, great I got the team together I was by then liaising every day With the Pakistani intelligence service Specifically Colonel Tarek Major Khaled Major General Muhammad Those were my three points of contact I called Colonel Tarek With whom I spoke every day Usually many times a day I said, we have another target We got together that night This time with a battering ram So I didn't have to use my foot

[21:55] We broke down the door And this was a big one In this raid we captured A senior member of a terrorist group Called Egyptian Islamic Jihad Egyptian Islamic Jihad Was responsible for the assassination Of the president of Egypt Anwar Sadat in 1981 EIJ merged in 1995 With Al Qaeda The director, the leader Of EIJ was Ayman Azawahidi And he became the number two In Al Qaeda So this was a big deal We also captured three or four other Arabs

[22:26] I reported it to headquarters They were taken away in a paddy wagon To Rubble Pindi jail Headquarters said, wow This is a good one This is a serious one We look forward to the interrogation Summertime and the living is easy Am I right, John? That is one of the best parts of summer, Alan Living really does feel easier You're about to travel Good thing you've got a couple of quints pieces Going with you They are as relaxed and comfortable As I want to feel That's why, whether I'm traveling Or staying at home

[22:56] I reach for the same quints Go anywhere pieces again and again Quints focuses on well-made Essentials They're the t-shirt I reach for first Every time In all seriousness I just bought another one today They're my favorite t-shirts too And when the ocean breeze kicks in at night As it does here in LA A quince lightweight cotton sweater Is sublime And perfect for travel too Which these days has all kinds of new challenges That impact how you pack So versatility really matters

[23:26] You gotta pack smart Like a spy That's why a pair of quints Is 100% European linen pants And a couple of linen shirts are coming with me They're breathable and easy to throw on Sometimes I add a t-shirt underneath For a whole other look They're the summer upgrade Anyone's rotation needs Starting at just $34 That's not a typo No, it's not Everything at quince is priced 50% to 80% less Than similar brands They work directly with ethical factories And cut out the middleman So you're paying for exceptional quality

[30:20] Well, we already knew how they got across the border We knew where the passes were I knew that he was telling me the truth And I said Where were you on September 11th? He said that he was in Toribora What were you doing in Toribora? He said You wouldn't believe me if I told you Maybe I would, actually You've been honest with me so far I'm really interested in knowing What you were doing in Toribora He said Well, I went to Afghanistan in 1998 Because I grew up as an orphan I grew up in an orphanage And I wanted to work in an orphanage Because there were so many children

[30:51] Who were orphaned from the war against the Soviets He raised money in the Middle East And he went to Afghanistan And he actually built an orphanage The orphanage was partially maintained by the Taliban He was the director of this orphanage The orphanage just happened to be built in Toribora He said as to where I was on 9-11 I was in Toribora And how did you learn of the attacks? He said People were literally dancing in the street And I went outside and I said What's going on?

[31:21] People said that the Americans had been attacked And that they would be punished For their support of Israel And he said I just went back inside And did my work Have you ever met Osama bin Laden? No And I've never seen Osama bin Laden Have you met members of Al Qaeda? Yes, actually Look, he says I'm pretty much the only Arab That you're going to meet from Afghanistan That was not a member of Al Qaeda I was there because I was trying to help orphan children

[31:52] And I just got caught up in things I'll tell you, to this day I'm confident that he was telling me the truth We did not send him to Guantanamo Which will come later We ended up, I called the Jordanian embassy And I said listen, we got this guy I'm convinced he's telling me the truth He doesn't seem like a dangerous guy We certainly don't have any intelligence Indicating that he's dangerous Do you want him back? Because otherwise we're just going to keep him in jail in Rawalpindi And they said sure

[32:22] Just put him on a plane, send him back to Amman We'll take care of him there I told him listen, we're going to release you to the Jordanian government As to what they do, I have no idea But you're going to go home And he shook my hand The funny thing, and I say this in my first book The funny thing was that When I ended the interrogation He said to me, before you leave May I ask you a question? Sure And he said I would like to Invite you into the embrace of Islam I said you want me to convert to Islam? And he said yes, and I will be your godfather

[32:54] I said well, thank you very much I appreciate that offer, it's very kind of you I'm a practicing Christian But I very much appreciate that kindness And I shook his hand and I said good luck to you And then we turned him over to the Jordanians And he flew back to Jordan Looking back on those early interrogations I learned a lot I learned that you can't have any preconceived notions When you go into one I learned that some people are Just inherently good people

[33:24] While others are inherently bad people I learned that some of them Want very much to kill you And others just want to go home Most will give you something None will give you everything There has to be a quid pro quo There has to be something in it for them But I became more and more comfortable With my way of doing things

[34:28] In the end, Major Khaled And I were the normal interrogation team We had this ongoing joke between us Where he would say Well John, I would like to be the bad cop today And I'd say come on Khaled You were the bad cop last time Let me be the bad cop But you're not allowed to hit them He would say And I said well yeah that's true I'm not allowed to hit them Yeah you are allowed to hit them So okay I'll be the good cop You be the bad cop And then we would play off each other like that

[34:58] And it worked We ended up capturing dozens of al-Qaeda fighters None of them were terribly important At that early stage But we were taking them off the street And then I had an idea That changed the course of the rest of my tour I went to my boss And I said I think that it is wrong of us To have these officers stationed all up and down the border It's wasted manpower

[35:29] It's too dangerous We can't protect them We know the al-Qaeda people are coming into Pakistan anyway So why keep our officers in danger? He said what are you advocating? I said we pull everybody off the border Just open the border And let al-Qaeda come into Pakistan You know that they're going to make a mistake They're all going to go to a safe house And then somebody is going to use a cell phone Or they're going to send an email And they're going to expose everyone

[36:00] So instead of trying to catch them one at a time on the border Let's catch them 20 at a time in a safe house instead And he said I think that'll work And so we cleared everybody off the border And brought them into Pakistan I kept up this pace for about 2 and a half weeks And when I say pace I mean at least 14 hours a day work 7 days a week I will admit to you that on the second day of the weekend The weekend in Pakistan is Friday and Saturday On Saturday morning I would allow myself the luxury

[36:31] Of sleeping until 7 or 8 in the morning Otherwise 14, 16, sometimes 18 hours a day You're in the office working, working, working Hunting these guys and then planning your next raid On a Saturday morning in early February 2002 I was asleep and the chief called me And he said sorry to wake you Get into the office as quickly as you can Something important has come up

[37:01] So I showered as quickly as I could Got dressed, rushed into the embassy And everybody was already there It was the station chief and the deputy The chief of operations, the FBI legal attache And his deputy and me We all go into the chief's office And when we're sitting in this circle I have no idea what I'm doing there Finally I said what's up And he said we received a cable overnight From a sister agency who told us that

[37:32] Abu Zubeda is somewhere in Pakistan And we have to catch him And literally everybody in the room Turned and looked at me Now I wish I could tell you that I said Leave it to me chief, I didn't I kind of furrowed my brow And nodded knowingly All the while thinking Abu Zubeda Abu Zubeda that name sounds vaguely familiar to me Remember I wasn't working on Al Qaeda at CTC I was working on Greek terrorism And training Middle Eastern intelligence services

[38:05] While we're sitting there I recalled reading an article In a recent issue of Time Magazine Saying that there's this guy out there Abu Zubeda and he's the number three in Al Qaeda And he's responsible for the deaths Of untold thousands of people And you have to catch him We knew very little We knew that Abu Zubeda Was moving around Pakistan constantly Probably because he believed we were on him

[38:36] And so he never spent more than one night In the same place He moved constantly The chief said come up with a plan This is going to be the most significant Counter-terrorism capture in CIA history In the next episode of Dead Drop What makes this spy tick Our target, Abu Zubeda Zayn al-Abdin Muhammad Hussein Proves way more elusive than we'd hoped But then persistence with a heaping

[39:07] Side order of just pure luck Puts Abu Zubeda squarely in our sights And like my boss in Pakistan called it The most important counter-terrorism capture In CIA history will begin That's next time on Dead Drop If you're enjoying the podcast Please check out my other podcasts That's Deep Program Monday through Friday With Ted Rahl and John Kiriakou We're at 9am eastern on YouTube and Rumble And Deep Focus with John Kiriakou

[39:37] We drop those twice a week also on YouTube Thanks again for listening I'm John Kiriakou Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz Cost-art and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz and Nick Mechanic Are its executive producers This podcast is a Cost-art and Touchstone production
