The mosquito cloud
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The mosquito cloud is the detail John Kiriakou returns to when describing the night he spent at Abu Zubaydah's bedside, waiting for him to come out of surgery after the capture.

The phobia

Kiriakou has described the fear as long-standing and disproportionate. Discussing his astrophotography in 2025, he mentioned that "for people who know me personally, they know that I have an utterly irrational fear of mosquitoes", which makes sitting outside for two hours at a telescope difficult, "I freaking hate it. But, you know, we all have our cross to bear."

In an earlier account: "I have a thing about mosquitoes my wife laughs about me but I consider myself to be a pretty tough guy but I'm freaked out at the thought of something drinking my blood it just is from when I was a little kid it's always bothered me."

Why he was unprotected

That association carried him into the hospital story. "There were mosquitoes all over the hospital and I I was freaked out by them because I couldn't take the chloricquin because um it gave me such terrible nightmares. So, I just stopped taking the chloricquin, which prevents malaria once the malarial mosquito bites you. So, I'm just taking my my chances with the mosquito." (The auto-caption renders the drug as chloricquin; the reference is to chloroquine.)

The room

"I go into Abu Zubeda's room to wait for him to come out of surgery and it's like a cloud of mosquitoes in there. I'm like, great."

His earlier telling gives the reason they were concentrated there, "swarms of mosquitoes are just feeding on people's open wounds", in a facility where a bar of Irish Springs soap with a dozen syringes stuck into it served as the sterile store. He has said elsewhere that he turned the ceiling fan on full blast "to blow the mosquitoes away from his wounds and frankly to keep them off myself."

The FBI agent

The consequence was cold. "So, I put the ceiling fan on high blast and this was March. It was a little bit cold, you know? So, I'm sitting there like this. I'm freezing and this FBI agent comes in. He goes, 'Dude, it's freezing in here. What are you doing?' I said, 'I would rather freeze to death than be bitten by a Pakistani mosquito.'"

Told in 2025 that mosquitoes will not fly above a certain temperature, and that the night ahead would be in the high fifties, Kiriakou said he had not known that, and thanked his host.

See also

- Abu Zubaydah
- Pakistan Station (2002)
- The desert sunset photograph
