Title: How Does The CIA Run The World? | John Kiriakou | Bidoun Waraq Podcast
Show: Bidoun Waraq (بدون ورق)
Date: 2026-01-29
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh0s0SBE7a0
Duration: 2:51:32

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[00:00] spell your name. So I spell it which made me angry and then he says to me like this, you are Jewish. The Israelis are the best intelligence service in the world. &gt;&gt; Are they better than the CIA? &gt;&gt; I think they are. Yeah, they're certainly deadlier. I'm from the CIA in Washington. I know exactly who you are and what you're doing here. &gt;&gt; Most were involved. The CIA was the guilty party here because the CIA did

[00:30] know that the hijackers were in the United States. &gt;&gt; What do you mean by very rich? &gt;&gt; To work with the CIA 95% of the time it's money. And so the CIA can kill anybody that it wants to kill. And they have a meeting every Tuesday on that. &gt;&gt; The the teams go all around the world. They kill the targets and then they meet again the next Tuesday and come up with the next list of people to kill. It's sick. &gt;&gt; Do the CIA work with the with Hollywood? Oh, he is. In fact, there's an office in the CIA's Office of Public Affairs whose

[01:00] job it is just to work with Hollywood Studios, nothing else. &gt;&gt; So, [music] you went to Pakistan and your objective was to find Abua. &gt;&gt; Like, that's al-Qaeda. That's what we're so afraid of. They're children. &gt;&gt; Once you start torturing someone, they're going to admit to stuff that they haven't done. And you could see the exact moment when he said, "Oh my god, the Americans have me." Because he looked at Spongebob.

[01:30] John Kyako, welcome to Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. Um, so there's a lot of things we'd like to talk about today and a lot of stuff that I've been reading. Um, especially I've read your book, The Reluctant Spy. &gt;&gt; Thank you for So now I know what [music] your career the 15ear career in the CIA and there are so many questions I want to ask about. Um but if we were thinking maybe what's the best place to start from um you being someone who worked 15 years you have 10 honorary medals is it

[02:00] that you've gotten one of the biggest one the the biggest one of them is you got the counterterrorism medal &gt;&gt; right &gt;&gt; um and having a lot of experience in the CIA if we were to understand for us to kickstart our discussion today what's the main job of the CIA why is it there &gt;&gt; um actually you can boil it down to its basic tenants. It's to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and then to analyze those

[02:30] secrets so that the American policy maker can make the best informed policy. So, we're specifically talking about the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the secretaries of state and defense. Those are the customers. &gt;&gt; So, those are those are your main audience. &gt;&gt; That's right. &gt;&gt; So, you provide the best information through recruiting spies. When you say recruiting spies, do you is it spies in in different countries? So So the CIA focuses on what's happening outside the US. &gt;&gt; Yeah, this is this is an important point

[03:00] actually that most Americans don't understand. It is that the CIA is focused overseas. The FBI is focused domestically. The CIA doesn't care what Americans are doing on a day-to-day basis. That's the FBI's jurisdiction. The CIA focuses only on recruiting foreign spies to steal foreign intelligence and to give it back to them. &gt;&gt; But there are controversies about the CIA being involved in domestic stuff. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And and there are credible

[03:30] allegations that the CIA has been involved in domestic operations mostly pre975. The CIA was just an outof control organization until 1975. It was experimenting on American citizens. It was recruiting Americans. It was dosing Americans with LSD just to see how they responded. It was um following and bugging the homes of uh civil rights activists and political activists,

[04:00] especially people who opposed the Vietnam War. That all changed in 1975 with what we call the Church Committee and the Pike Committee. They became the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. and they passed a law saying that the CIA was not permitted to operate domestically. &gt;&gt; Okay. So, let's focus on what on on on your experience in the in the CIA and then throughout your experience uh we're going to talk about important stuff that happened that changed the Middle East and changed the world world frankly.

[04:30] &gt;&gt; Um but before we lead up to September 11th &gt;&gt; Mhm. uh which was one of the biggest pivots as um you were working in Greece before that. &gt;&gt; But before before we get to you speak

[05:00] State Department language services. Okay. &gt;&gt; And so I learned And you even stayed in in Bahrain for a bit for three years. &gt;&gt; I spent two years in Bahrain. Two of the happiest years of my life. &gt;&gt; I served in Kuwait and I served in Saudi Arabia. It's uh &gt;&gt; we're going to dedicate um a full episode um about what about your service in Kuwait &gt;&gt; and especially the invasion and you've we've we've had so many episodes about what has happened in 1990. Um but we had

[05:30] it from a Kuwaiti perspective. it would be nice to to to talk to you about it because you were the main guy basically the CIA guy in 1990. &gt;&gt; Um so yeah we we'll do that uh on a later stage but um so you were in Athens and you were before going to Athens you were an analyst. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; And then you switched to ops. Yes. &gt;&gt; So let's what's the what's the difference between being an analyst in the CIA and and being an an operations guy? analysts are are stationed in the

[06:00] CIA's directorate of intelligence and operations people in the directorate of operations. And back then, you know, never the two shall meet. So, as an analyst, your job is to sit in a cubicle about this size and think the big thoughts. So, you're reading CIA cables, State Department reporting cables, NSA telephone intercepts, uh, cables from the Pentagon and from the Pentagon's people overseas, and foreign press. So,

[06:30] you become an expert on the country that you're covering. That's all you're reading all day long, five or six days a week. And then you write papers that mostly nobody reads &gt;&gt; or you respond to questions from the president. Most importantly, you write for something called the president's daily brief. This is a 16page um report that's written for the president six days a week on everything that has happened overnight and it's briefed to the president, the vice president, the national security

[07:00] adviser, the secretaries and deputy secretaries of state and defense, the chairman and joint chairman of the g of the chiefs of staff and uh and a handful of people at the White House and the National Security Council. So it's like um it's like a newspaper a foreign policy newspaper comes to the president and the main people &gt;&gt; and it's very very highly classified. It's the most sensitive report. &gt;&gt; What would be typically in government? &gt;&gt; What would be typically on let's say &gt;&gt; I'll give you an example. Yeah. &gt;&gt; And it's it's safe to say this now that

[07:30] so many years have passed. I noticed in late 1990 that Saddam Hussein was very quietly moving milit senior military officers out of their positions and he was making them ambassadors in weird places like Philippines or Burma, Myanmar, you just getting them out and he was replacing them with people from his Tigriti clan. Saddam was from Alja, this village in

[08:00] Tit. And so he was mostly taking people from Aja and putting them in these senior positions. They were inexperienced, but he knew he could trust them because they were relatively close relatives. So I noticed this and I said it to my boss um and I said, "These these are barely being announced in the Iraqi press and nobody's even commenting about them." He said, "Well, what does it mean?" I said, "He's worried about an uprising, and so he's replacing people with his closest

[08:30] relatives, but they don't have any military experience, so it's good for him, but it's better for us." &gt;&gt; So he said, "You have to tell the president that." &gt;&gt; So I wrote the whole thing for the president. They gave me the first page in the book that next day. And then in the margin, the president wrote, "Thanks. I appreciate it." And sent it back to me. was present at &gt;&gt; uh that was George HW Bush. &gt;&gt; George HW &gt;&gt; I'll tell you a funny story about that morning if if I could.

[09:00] &gt;&gt; Um the morning actually no you know what I'll save it for tomorrow. &gt;&gt; All right great. &gt;&gt; Yeah [laughter] it's more appropriate for tomorrow &gt;&gt; please note just just so we don't forget the that story it's just want to make sure the OCD in me &gt;&gt; um you transferred from being an analyst to an operations guy and for you to do the transfer. So we spoke about what an anal an analyst does right what's what's what what does operation do &gt;&gt; right in operations it's very simple it's to recruit spies to steal those secrets and then you implement operations there was a CIA psychiatrist

[09:30] that I worked with a couple of times on a couple very sensitive operations because sometimes you're recruiting somebody who might be crazy or almost crazy and you need to make sure that you can get the information from them &gt;&gt; before they go crazy. So she paid me a great compliment one time. She told my promotion panel, "John Kuryaku will think of 30 different ideas for an operation. 28 of them are crazy, but two of them are really good." And

[10:00] everybody laughed. That was actually a very big compliment because you have to come up with these ideas that nobody's ever thought of. I'm not going to recruit Saddam Hussein to tell me what his plans are. So, I need to recruit somebody who has access to Saddam. How do I get to somebody with access to Saddam when he's completely surrounded by his own people who never leave the country? Well, you come up with an idea where you start with the Kurds or maybe

[10:30] there's some Shia guy from Basra or some Jordanian general or and you work your way into that circle. That's what operations is all about. &gt;&gt; So, how would you typically work your way into that circle? Like if if you recruit someone who's on the in the third circle, how would you be able to get into his closest circle? &gt;&gt; It's all about what is called targeting. So, you need to figure out before you say anything at all, you need to figure out who has the access that you're looking for. And then once you identify

[11:00] the per the hard part is identifying the person. &gt;&gt; The easy part is actually making the recruitment. You have to look for something called a vulnerability. Now, a vulnerability may be obvious. Maybe you're a gambler and you're in debt. I can pay your debts &gt;&gt; if you give me what I'm looking for. Maybe you're not a gambler. Maybe you don't drink. You don't do drugs. You don't gamble. You don't do anything. You're just a good man. Well,

[11:30] maybe that's the vulnerability. Maybe you love your family so much that you want the best for your children and you want your children to go to Harvard, Stanford, University of Texas. I can take care of that for you and it won't cost you anything if you give me what I want. Um, in training. &gt;&gt; So, so training. So, you before you moved to be being an op guy, you went to the farm, &gt;&gt; right?

[12:00] &gt;&gt; Which is where the training happened, right? &gt;&gt; That's right. So what happens in the in the farm and what kind of training do you usually get there? &gt;&gt; Oh, the easier question is what kind of training don't you get? &gt;&gt; Uh so the analytic training was was easy. They just teach you the CIA writing style. It takes six weeks and then you go back to headquarters and live happily ever after. &gt;&gt; In operations, you're in training constantly. So it started off with what we called crash and bang. They teach you how to crash cars through roadblocks

[12:30] 100 kilometers an hour backwards while you're shooting out the window at another car. Movie stuff. &gt;&gt; Movie stuff. Legitimately. &gt;&gt; Um, and if you have car sickness, you're going to have a seriously hard time. People throwing up all the time. Uh, then you go to the actual operations training where they teach you how to recruit spies to steal secrets. And you start in a mock uh diplomatic cocktail party, right? So all the instructors are pretending to be diplomats from other

[13:00] countries. And in mine, [snorts] I spoke Arabic and I spoke Greek. So I went up and I said, "Hi, how are you? I'm John Kiryaku. I'm the new first secretary at the American Embassy." &gt;&gt; So you come and you pose as a person who works in the embassy. &gt;&gt; Okay? &gt;&gt; Or in the military or in the commerce department or in some company. It could be anything. Anything at all. And this guy says to me, um, um, Buenos Diaz. &gt;&gt; Yeah, I don't speak Spanish. And he says, Bahada de Kuba from the

[13:30] Cuban embassy. And I said, okay, nice to meet you. And I walked away because clearly that wasn't my target. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; So I went to another guy and he was a Russian and we exchanged business cards. And &gt;&gt; that's all a mock. &gt;&gt; Yeah. All mock. All for pretend. And then I I come upon this short guy and I said, "Hi, John Kiryaku from the American Embassy. How are you?" And he says, "Um, I dinkro in Greek. I'm from Cyprus." And I thought, "Okay, here's my

[14:00] target that they created for me." [laughter] I said, "What do you do for a living?" He said, "I work at the port." Okay, I don't I don't care about that. I don't know anything about ports. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; And I said, "Oh, that sounds so interesting." &gt;&gt; Which it didn't. I said, 'What do you do at the port?' And he said, 'Oh, you know, when the ships come in, I'm in charge of the the lading and then when they go out, I make sure all the paperwork is right. Also not interesting to me. And I said, that's fascinating. It it it's so international things

[14:30] constantly coming in and I'm just trying to make make conversation. And he said, yes, like for example, tomorrow we have a shipment coming in full of hydrochloro thorioide. I don't know what that is. And I said, "Oh, that sounds so interesting. Would you do me the honor of letting me take you to lunch?" And I gave him my business card, which is exactly what I was supposed to do. So, we went to lunch and I said, "So, tell me about this hydrochloro floral." &gt;&gt; So, the mock continues. &gt;&gt; Oh, yeah. It continues for weeks. For

[15:00] weeks. Okay. Six weeks, as a matter of fact. &gt;&gt; Wow. Okay. &gt;&gt; So, we're at lunch and he says, "Yeah, I don't know what this stuff is." So, I send a mock cable to headquarters and I say, "I'm I'm here in the Republic of Victoria and I met this criate and here's his name and here's his age and here's his height and eye color and hair color. Please tell me if you have anything in the files on him with his name." He told me he's expecting a shipment of hydrochloroioide. I don't know what that is. So, they send

[15:30] me back. They said yes in our files. He's a nice guy. He works for the port just like he said. Hydrochlorofluioide is the precursor chemical to cocaine. So now I'm interested. &gt;&gt; You're interested. Yeah. &gt;&gt; I would be writing for the analyst. So I would say there's a shipment of hydrochlorazide coming in to the port of Victoria, which is of course a madeup country, and uh the ship is coming from North Korea.

[16:00] Well, now the analysts are going to say, "Oh my gosh, the North Koreans are involved in cocaine production." &gt;&gt; Okay? &gt;&gt; And so they write that for the president. That's the the system. Okay? The way it works. But anyway, that operational thing went six weeks and then we did bomb training. We we learned how to make bombs and then we learned how to diffuse bombs. And then in the final exam, you can build any bomb you want. And uh the the final is it has to explode and destroy whatever it is you're trying to destroy. So, I built a

[16:30] it's called an anfo bomb. It's ammonium nitrate and I put it under a van. And so, we all got in the bunker. We looked through the slit that's just barely above ground. We pushed the plunger. Actually, it was a button, not really a plunger. &gt;&gt; And it blew up and they found the transmission 300 meters away. &gt;&gt; Wow. &gt;&gt; I got an A. So, um, then we went to because I was going to

[17:00] Athens, I actually went out to Athens and then they sent me back for another six weeks for something called advanced counterterrorist operations training. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; And then advanced counterterrorist driving, which is, you know, in the desert in Nevada and over sand dunes while you're shooting out the window trying to drive. And &gt;&gt; it was all very, very theatrical &gt;&gt; and demanding as well. and demanding. The pressure is ridiculous. &gt;&gt; You're one of the few people who were able to do the transition from being an analyst to &gt;&gt; It was exceedingly rare to move from

[17:30] analysis to operations. But I'll tell you how that happened. I got so bored in analysis. It's Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, 24 hours a day. For years, I said, I'm going to go crazy because Bill Clinton is not going to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I got to do something different. So, I saw a job listing and it was looking for a counterterrorism operations officer in Greece and it said, "Successful candidate will have

[18:00] either Greek or Arabic." &gt;&gt; Tailored for you. &gt;&gt; As it turned out, I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Greek and Arabic. &gt;&gt; But for you to work in the CIA, do you have to be obviously you have to be born in the US, a US citizen? &gt;&gt; You have to be US citizen. But does your mom and dad also have to be born in the US or that doesn't matter? &gt;&gt; No, it doesn't matter. They're going to investigate you just like they investigate everybody. My investigation actually took very long. It was 18 months because not only were were many of my relatives still in Greece and

[18:30] Greek citizens, but one cousin of my grandmother was a member of the Pulit bureau of the Greek Communist Party, which caused me no end of trouble. And I never met the man. So, it took 18 months to investigate him and they just decided he was just some old man who loves communism and so they gave me the job. &gt;&gt; So, they'll investigate all of your family and just see. &gt;&gt; They sure do. &gt;&gt; Okay. So, they just they need to clear all all of your family before you become someone who works in the CIA. &gt;&gt; That's right. &gt;&gt; Okay. So, um you you saw the the thing

[19:00] that said they needed someone, &gt;&gt; right? So I went down to talk to the hiring officer who was a very senior officer and I said, "Listen, I have no operational experience whatsoever, but I speak Greek and Arabic." And he said, "What? Are you willing to be tested?" And I said, "Yeah." I said, "I just tested three weeks ago in Arabic, but I'll test again if you want." It turned out that his secretary was Greek. And not only was she Greek, she was from the same island and same village that my

[19:30] grandparents were from. &gt;&gt; Roads. &gt;&gt; Roads. the village of Yalisos. So she comes out of the office and she starts speaking speaking to me in Greek. I respond in Greek and she says, "Um, he gets a thumbs up from me, Dave." And and then this Dave says, "Well, your Arabic scores are excellent." He said, "It's going to take some convincing for up the chain of command, but it's a lot easier and a lot cheaper to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take

[20:00] an operations officer and teach him to speak Greek and Arabic." &gt;&gt; Fair enough. &gt;&gt; So, it took, I'm going to say, a couple of months, but he convinced people up the chain that I was the guy. And so, I got the job and I went to Athens as a counterterrorism operations officer. So, so back to the farm, you were you had this u Gibbro. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; The criate guy. &gt;&gt; That's right. &gt;&gt; Um to um to to convince over the period of 6 weeks. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; So you you you you met you sent them a cable. They said, "Oh, this is um raw

[20:30] material for cocaine." &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; So for you to pass, you need to you need to recruit him. &gt;&gt; Yes. So I recruited him. &gt;&gt; You recruited him? How would you typically recruit someone? Because we're going to speak about this a lot. And you you recruited in in Greece five people over a period of 18 months. &gt;&gt; I had success and you had that comp in comparison to everyone else uh was was was more than just good. It was really good. It was outstanding if I may say &gt;&gt; it was. &gt;&gt; So you had a special thing for recruiting people. So now I would like

[21:00] to learn from you. How would you typically go about in terms of recruiting? Maybe take me to a real case that has happened. &gt;&gt; Sure. Well, even before you you meet the person that you want to recruit, there have to be some things about you that have to be consistent. You have to really love people, right? I would so much rather go to a party where I know nobody than to sit at home and watch a movie. &gt;&gt; Oh, so you are a social person. &gt;&gt; Very much so. And you have to be to be successful. There are no introverts in

[21:30] CIA operations. You have to be an extrovert. And so, um, &gt;&gt; because I just love doing things like that, I would go out I I'm not exaggerating when I tell you I would go out five or six nights a week overseas to um parties, dinners, receptions, events. Hi, how are you? Here's my card. Let's get to know each other. &gt;&gt; So, when you were in in in Greece, um you you recruited someone from the

[22:00] Middle East. &gt;&gt; Yeah. See, in Greece, our targets were the Abu Nidal Organization. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; The Libyans, the Iraqis, uh the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and PFLP, General Command, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. &gt;&gt; Do you have any information about the Abu Nidal operations because that's very popular here in the Middle East? Just to know more about Abu Nidal and his type of operations that he did. &gt;&gt; Yeah, the reason the reason that Abu Nidal was in the end unsuccessful is because his organization was based on

[22:30] his personality alone. and his personality was such that he was very conspiratorial. And so what we were able to do was to plant a seed in his ear that his people were talking to the CIA. So listen, if you're a member of Abonal organization, your name is Muhammad. I can't recruit you. You hate me. You want to kill me. &gt;&gt; Yeah. So I know that there's this other guy Abdullah in Abu Nidal and I say Abdullah

[23:00] I'm from the CIA. Muhammad told me to talk to you. Well, he's going to kill you. And then I tell Rashid, I said, "Hey, did you hear Abdullah killed Muhammad, which is crazy because Abdullah is one of our sources and and Muhammad was one of the true believers of Abu Nidal and then Rashid kills Abdullah and next thing you know &gt;&gt; chaos. &gt;&gt; They've all killed each other and the only one left is Abu Nidal and then

[23:30] Saddam kills him." &gt;&gt; So that's what happened with Abdullah. &gt;&gt; You know, I think in the end they said he had a heart attack. He didn't have any heart attack, &gt;&gt; but there was chaos around the &gt;&gt; Oh, yeah. &gt;&gt; from the CIA. &gt;&gt; Oh, yeah. We We created that chaos because we knew he was crazy in the first place and that if we just planted a seed, he would do the rest himself. Very interesting. See, this is what you do. If you can't get to that innermost circle, you get others to do your dirty work.

[24:00] And there's another component to this, too. Mhm. It's what motivates people to work with the CIA. 95% of the time it's money. The CIA has literally an unlimited supply of money. If you are wellplaced, we can make you very rich. &gt;&gt; What do you mean by very rich? Well, we gave out 25 million in cash for Khalichek Muhammad, 10 million in cash

[24:30] for Abu Zuba, 50 million for Nicholas Maduro. If you have the access and you help us and we'll give it to you any way you want it. Cash, gold, diamonds, land, Bitcoin, name it, we'll pay it on the first day. &gt;&gt; And they usually do pay that. &gt;&gt; Oh, they always pay it. Otherwise, what kind of reputation would the organization have if they made a promise and didn't fulfill it? &gt;&gt; They gave out a lot of money in Iraq.

[25:00] &gt;&gt; A lot of money. &gt;&gt; So, he never had an heart attack cuz that's the that's the theory. &gt;&gt; I I never believed he had a heart attack. No, I believed he was snuffed out because he wasn't any use to the Iraqis anymore. He was just a pain yelling about this and that. And, you know, Saddam was weird about control and this was somebody he couldn't control. So when you were in in Greece, there was I stopped you when you said there was an Abunadala organization. There was another one the November 17th is it as

[25:30] well? &gt;&gt; Well, and then the Greek groups that we were going against were 17 November and uh Popular Revolutionary Struggle, Ella, two domestic Greek groups. That's where I spent almost all of my time working against the uh the Greeks. &gt;&gt; And they were all anti-Americans. This is why you were &gt;&gt; Oh, yeah. They murdered well they murdered 27 people including the CIA station chief, two American defense attaches, the minister of communications, the minister of finance, uh the Turkish ambassador, the deputy

[26:00] ambassador, uh the British defense attache. They were very very murderous. And so we knew that they were constantly casing the American embassy. They were constantly planning attacks on American embassy personnel. And so the job was to to capture them. &gt;&gt; But you're an analyst guy. And then you went we moved to ops. Were you not shook by the circumstances? You were you were a guy who were just behind the office in Langley. &gt;&gt; And then &gt;&gt; I learned a lot &gt;&gt; when you moved to Greece and &gt;&gt; it's a different life. &gt;&gt; You being an American.

[26:30] &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; You would by default be targeted and you were targeted. Yeah, I was. &gt;&gt; But were you not like were you not scared um to be in that uh environment? &gt;&gt; That's a good question. Athens was literally the only place where I was scared. And it was it was because it was for a couple of reasons. First of all, my family was there and I had two young sons at the time. And um and my wife was Greek American and she just loved being there. She just could not see it as a

[27:00] dangerous place, which it very much was. In fact, we spent more money on security in Athens then than we spent in Beirut. That's how dangerous it was. &gt;&gt; So, &gt;&gt; so that was one of the reasons why I was scared. The other reason was I knew that they were actively targeting me. &gt;&gt; I drove a fully armored car. It was a level four armored BMW 540. I carried a 9mm on my waist and a 38 revolver on my

[27:30] ankle. And just in case things really went bad, I kept a knife in my back pocket. &gt;&gt; And you had two security guards. And I had two security guards on the house all the time. Yeah. In the meantime, I'm out there provoking them, you know, actively trying to recruit them. And so it was it was a hot war between us. &gt;&gt; There was a story that you mentioned in your book where where there was a Middle Eastern intelligence guy that you went to his house.

[28:00] &gt;&gt; That story. &gt;&gt; I am so proud of that operation and I wish that it had been my idea. It was not my idea. I had a mentor at the CIA. He was an old man. He was a retiree. His name was Gus Avricatus. He became famous and they even made a movie about him, Charlie Wilson's War, in which he's played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. So, I told Gust, I said, "Listen, this this enemy country, the CIA won't allow me to say what country it is, but

[28:30] it's kind of obvious. this enemy country. They're getting a new intelligence service uh representative and I want to bump into him, but this is not a guy who's going to be at a diplomatic cocktail party. &gt;&gt; How do I get to him? So Gus gave me this idea. I I was much younger at the time. I was 35 years old. My hair was darker. My my I grew a beard and it was dark. Now I'm all gray. But I put some books

[29:00] in a book bag. I went to his house. I saw his car was on the street. And with my book bag, I broke the side view mirror off of his car. So I picked it up. I went to the next door neighbor just to provide cover for myself. And I said to the woman, "Is this your car?" She said, "No, it's the man next door. He doesn't speak Greek." So I went to his house. I knocked on the door and I saidto, "I'm so sorry, sir, but the lady next door told me that this is your car." And

[29:30] I broke the I said, "I'm so clumsy." He says, "Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't speak I don't speak Greek." I said, "Oh, you speak English?" "I speak English." I said, "I'm so sorry. I I I was clumsy and I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and and I broke the mirror off your car and the lady next door told me that it was your car and I want to say I'm sorry and I want to pay for it. He's like, "Oh, you're so clumsy. What's wrong with you? You could you couldn't see how close you were." I said, "I I'm so sorry. I was just not paying attention.

[30:00] It's all my fault. I want to pay for it." In the meantime, well, I said to him, I said, "Uh, I said, "Your English, you have an accent. can you tell me where you're from? And he told me from this Middle East country. And I said, I'm from the United States. I said, oh, I wish our countries could be friends again. Maybe someday. And he's just like, and I see his little daughter. She looked to be about four years old. She's playing on the floor of the living room.

[30:30] And I I said to him, "May I have a glass of water?" Knowing that culturally he had to give it to me. &gt;&gt; Yeah. and he says, "Wait right here." So, uh, I walked into the house and I said to his daughter, I got down on my knee and I said, "Uh, uh," and she tells me her name and I said, "How old are you?" And she says, "She's four." And he comes in, he's holding the water and he says, "What exactly do you

[31:00] want from me?" &gt;&gt; He knows that, you know. &gt;&gt; Oh, 100%. He's a professional. He's not an idiot. So I said, 'L I'm from the CIA in Washington. I know exactly who you are and what you're doing here. You have one chance to be on the side of the good guys. And I took out my business card and I said, "This is my real name. The phone rings on my desk at the American embassy. You have until 10:00 tomorrow morning to call me.

[31:30] You can be on the side of the good guys or you can go down with your leader." and I put it down on it the table and he said to me, "I admire your courage in approaching me. Very inventive." He said, "But I hate that you did it in my own home. You can leave now." So I said, "10 tomorrow morning." And I walked out. The next morning, everybody's gathered around my desk &gt;&gt; waiting for the phone call.

[32:00] &gt;&gt; Waiting everybody. [laughter] And then the phone rings. &gt;&gt; Does it? &gt;&gt; Uhhuh. And he said, "What do you want from me?" And I said, "Meet me in the Hilton Hotel coffee shop in two hours and don't bring a weapon." So we had we our security people were literally at every table. &gt;&gt; Wow. &gt;&gt; Of the Hilton coffee shop. Everybody's armed. I have a bulletproof vest on under my suit. And he comes and I tell him, "Have a seat." And he said, "So,

[32:30] how does this play out?" And I said, "I want access to your code room and I want all your weapons." And he said, "Do you know how hard that is?" And I said, "Yes, I also know how important you are and I know that of anybody in the embassy besides the ambassador, you have the access." And he said, "What do I get in return?" I said, "Well, number one, you get to live. Number two, I can make you rich beyond

[33:00] your wildest dreams. So, what is it? What do you want? And we negotiated a deal. And we made a plan. We took the codes. The weapons were buried in a bunker outside the embassy underground. We went in the middle of the night, six guys with shovels. We took all the weapons and then he disappeared. Is there a witness protection program in gender? Is that is that a is that a really &gt;&gt; Yes. The last time I heard about him, it

[33:30] was it was several years after I left the uh left the CIA and I ran into a former colleague and I said, "How's Steve?" Steve was what we just called him. We didn't use his Arabic name. We just made up a name. I said, "How's Steve?" He said, "Believe it or not, Steve owns seven restaurants." &gt;&gt; Oh, good for Steve. &gt;&gt; And I said, "Really?" He said, "We set him up with one restaurant. He just had a knack for it and now he has seven restaurants. He's rich. I said, "Good for him." So, he made a life for

[34:00] himself. He said, "Yeah, his kids are in college. Everything's good." I said, "Great. That's what it's all about." &gt;&gt; So, the witness protection thing is is is a real thing. &gt;&gt; Oh, it's a real thing. &gt;&gt; And then he just gets vanishes. And &gt;&gt; you you get American citizenship. &gt;&gt; Your family gets American citizenship. Uh you get the seed money to start whatever it is you want. I mean, you've provided us with a great service. And whatever we negotiated, I'm going to give him a hundred,000. I'm going to give him a million or five million or whatever it's going to be. That's what he used to get started in life.

[34:30] &gt;&gt; But those people and that's where the real talk gets gets in is those people are are informants against their country at the end of the day. They've committed espionage &gt;&gt; or treason some treason, right? &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; So in that sense, how are they viewed in the CIA? Are those are they're viewed as people? &gt;&gt; Yeah, that's a good question. So, you would think that they would be held at arms length because they they're traitors. &gt;&gt; Yeah.

[35:00] &gt;&gt; But there is such an overwhelming sense in the CIA that we are the good guys that we consider them to be the good guys, too. I'll give you another example. When I was in Greece, I got a cable. I have to be careful how I say this. I got a cable saying that

[35:30] okay in in a in a Middle Eastern country there was a person who had been the head of that country's intelligence service and he decided to flip and work for us and somehow the leader of that country learned that he was working for us. He escaped All three of his sons were executed. He only had three sons. &gt;&gt; They were all executed. He was relocated to the United States, but he was destroyed.

[36:00] &gt;&gt; Yeah, it must be &gt;&gt; destroyed. I got a cable in Washington saying that his brother had just arrived in Washington. I'm sorry, had just arrived in Athens. He had been hiding on a Libyan oil tanker and he jumped over the side when it came into the port in Beir Pereas, Greece. And they said, "He's not a source of ours, but we we owe it to his brother to take care of him. So meet him. Here's the number the brother had

[36:30] given to us, and give him $5,000." So I called him. I told him, "I'm a friend of your brother and let's meet at this cafe." So, we met at the cafe and I said, "Your brother is a hero and it's sickening what happened to to his sons. We're very sorry, but he told us that you were on this oil tanker. I wanted to give you this to just tide you over. Get yourself a hotel or something." I ended

[37:00] up meeting with him three times. And again, because his brother had done this great service to the CIA, we decided we're just going to give him a green card and let him relocate to the United States. Okay. I resigned in 2004, effective in early 2005. In 2007, I happened to be in Dulles airport. I don't work for the CIA anymore. I'm going on a business trip and I hear this voice say, "John." And I looked and I

[37:30] said, Muhammad. I said, "You're in Washington." And he says, "Yeah, I got a job at the airport. I'm a baggage handler." And I said, "You speak English?" [laughter] And he said, "Yeah, I'm an American now." I said, "Mashallah, I can't believe it." He said, "Yeah, I got the green card. You helped me out." And it was just so good to see him. I said, "How's your brother?" And he said, "Uh, my brother and I don't talk anymore. We

[38:00] had a falling out and but everybody's good. Everybody's healthy. I was so happy to see him. I never saw him again, but I was glad that he landed on his feet. &gt;&gt; Are those moments and you've had many of those kind of moments. Are those moments special to you? &gt;&gt; They really are. I mentioned to you before we started recording that that in a different life, I would be friends easily with 90% of the people that I had recruited. Easily. You know, there's this conventional wisdom that if you're if you're recruited by the CIA, it's

[38:30] because you have some kind of flaw. There's some flaw in your personality or in your mind, something wrong. Why would you do this? &gt;&gt; These are usually really great people. They just find themselves in some situation. Oh, which was something that I was going to tell you. 95% of them do it for the money. &gt;&gt; Okay. And I can understand that. You know, life is expensive. The other 5% though that were fascinating um they'll do it for revenge. They hate their government.

[39:00] Maybe they've it's maybe it's as simple as they've been passed over for promotion. Maybe it's that they hate their government's leader or they hate a policy that the government has implemented. But some of them do it for the revenge. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Others do it because they love love love the United States. They've seen these movies and it's incredible and Top Gun and you know whatever and they just they

[39:30] want to be as close to being an American as possible. &gt;&gt; So with these movies and media, &gt;&gt; do the CIA work with the with Hollywood and work with with news agencies? &gt;&gt; Oh yes. Yes. And they've finally come clean about that in the last 10 years. &gt;&gt; So it's propaganda. &gt;&gt; Absolutely. Yes. &gt;&gt; And &gt;&gt; 100%. In fact, there's an office in the CIA's Office of Public Affairs whose job it is just to work with Hollywood Studios, nothing else. That's why every movie that comes out about the CIA is pro-CIA.

[40:00] Every one of them. That they do that on purpose. And and the rest of the 95% is some people just do it for the excitement. They see these James Bond movies or, you know, John Wick or whatever the other ones are and they think, "Oh my god, that's so exciting. I want to do that." And so they just volunteer. &gt;&gt; Interesting. So, but the company thing is not real, is it? The company one they call the CIA. &gt;&gt; That one's especially bad. Listen,

[40:30] there's one that's worse. It It was on the CBS network in the United States and it was called um Covert Affairs. stupid name for a stupid show. I watched one episode. &gt;&gt; So, this analyst just walks into the Oval Office. First of all, you would be arrested if you did that. &gt;&gt; Okay? &gt;&gt; You don't even have access to the Oval Office. And you just walk in like you own the building and she says, "Madame President," the president, of course, is a black woman. &gt;&gt; Okay?

[41:00] &gt;&gt; She says, "Madame President, I need to take a hit out on someone." It's like, "What? First of all, you're under arrest for for conspiracy to commit murder. You can't just go walk like you own the White House. You walk into the president's office. I watched one episode on I said I'll never watch it again. And then it was cancelled. But I've been an adviser on oh four or five Hollywood movies and several different series where they'll send me the script six months in advance and I go through the script line by line and I say, "Nope, that would never happen." Yes,

[41:30] good point. There was one uh I was consulting on a on a TV series called uh True Lies based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and um they told me read the script carefully and tell us if all of it is true to life if it would really happen. Well, in the very opening scene there's this clandestine operation in London and I said no no no this would never ever happen in London. we are so close to the British that we would have

[42:00] to inform the British in advance that we were going to do this operation. Can't do it. And I said, "You have to move it to another country." &gt;&gt; And so when it came out six months later, I was so excited to watch it. So I'm watching it. And then the whole scene was in Brussels. And I said, "They listen to me." [laughter] &gt;&gt; Great. &gt;&gt; Another one was they're in a mosque and everybody's praying and they all have shoes on. And I said, "No, no, no. You can't have everybody praying with their shoes on. Have none of you ever been in

[42:30] a mosque? Like, there's not one Muslim in all of Hollywood to tell them you take your shoes off before you walk into the mosque. &gt;&gt; Do you think Do you think that represents the disconnect between the American American culture and the Muslim culture? &gt;&gt; 100%. People just don't know. I'll tell you what they do know now is they know Dubai and they think Dubai is the Middle East. And it's like, no, Dubai is New York with better weather. That's it. That's not the Middle East. You got to actually go to the Middle East. You know, this is why this is why I wanted

[43:00] to live and work in the Middle East. I don't know if you've heard me tell this story, but when I was 9 years old, I told my parents that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. &gt;&gt; No, I didn't. &gt;&gt; And they thought that was cute. I was a little kid. They bought me walkie-talkies. My seven-year-old brother and I used to play on the walkie-talkies. And disappearing ink. I could write messages and it would disappear and then you put it underwater and the message reappears. Very cool. &gt;&gt; So when I was 16, my father and I were driving down the I

[43:30] still remember we were driving down Old Plank Road past Frasier's Pond and I said, "Dad, I decided that I want to be a spy in the Middle East." And he said, "Oh my goodness, still with this spy business. You can't be like a dentist or a doctor or something. &gt;&gt; You have to be a spy." I said, "I'm serious. I want to be a spy, but I want to live in the Middle East." And he said, "Why? we've never been to the Middle East. I said, "Dad, I love the culture and the history and the the

[44:00] poetry and I just I love everything about it." He was he was upset because he was worried. &gt;&gt; He wasn't really sure what that meant at the end of the day. And so I only applied to George Washington University for two reasons. One, because it was two blocks from the White House, right in the center of the action. And two, because it was one of only three universities in all of the United States that offered a Middle Eastern studies degree. So I majored in Middle Eastern

[44:30] studies. My focus was Islam. And um then I stayed for a master's degree in legislative affairs thinking I'll go to Capitol Hill. I'll go to the State Department. And then I was recruited into the CIA. And I became a spy in the Middle East just like I said I wanted. &gt;&gt; By Dr. What's his name? Dr. &gt;&gt; Dr. Post. Gerald Post. That's a really nice story. &gt;&gt; He's a good man. A good man. &gt;&gt; Advice everyone listening to this is to read your book. It's it's a fascinating story honestly and um just explains a

[45:00] lot of details that we might not have time to explain today. &gt;&gt; Um but we're trying to build a layer on top of that uh today which is is equally important. And so we let's go back to to Greece and and and recruitment for us to finish with the recruitment question is um once you recruit someone um it takes you a lot of time to recruit him. You the the story you told us is not the typ it's not a typical story. &gt;&gt; It's not at all a typical story.

[45:30] &gt;&gt; Usually you'll work with someone they call it developing, right? &gt;&gt; Yes. There's a there's something called the asset acquisition cycle. Okay. &gt;&gt; This is the cycle whereby you make a recruitment. Spot, assess, develop, recruit. &gt;&gt; So, I spot you somewhere and I say, "He might be interesting to talk to and I assess you." I say, "Hi, how are you?" "Oh, your name is Fisel. What do you do for a living?" "Oh, you're a you're a general in the Ministry of Defense." "Okay, now I'm interested." Then I develop you. That's the long period

[46:00] where I take you to lunch, I take you to dinner, I introduce you to my wife, you introduce me to your wife, we become friends, we go on vacation together, we become best friends. &gt;&gt; And then I say, "Yeah, fel. Um, you know that new Russian tank that just came out? I would really appreciate it if you could give me the plans to that tank. I I know that you guys are buying this tank. I would really love to see a copy of the plans and you do that for me

[46:30] because we're best friends. And then in the end I say, "Listen, Fisel, there's something I haven't really been honest with you about." And I I'm not really in the State Department. I'm actually a CIA officer. I hope you're okay with that. &gt;&gt; Breaking cover. &gt;&gt; Breaking cover. That's what it's called. And you say, because we're best friends, you say, "Yeah, I kind of suspected something was up when you asked me for the plans to the Russian tank." And I say, "Yeah, I mean, you're a good guy. I'm a good guy. We're friends. Um, but

[47:00] listen, you've been really good to me. And um, and I know that, you know, you love your family so much. You don't make as much money as, you know, some other people might. So, if you would agree to be a consultant for me, the word consultant often softens the blow. if I could hire you as a consultant, I can give you $10,000, $20,000 a month. And it's easy. We meet once a month for an hour or two hours in

[47:30] a hotel someplace. And uh I give it to you in cash and um you just I'll ask you questions and you answer my questions. That's it. &gt;&gt; They always say yes. &gt;&gt; Always say yes. &gt;&gt; Always. You never make a pitch unless you're certain they're going to say yes. So that's a lot of time after developing and then &gt;&gt; a lot of time and it's usually a year sometimes two years it takes. &gt;&gt; Would they negotiate with you and just say on top of the the money I'd like to re relocate myself to the US when I'm

[48:00] done. &gt;&gt; A lot of times they say that and and I say of course and that's a conversation we can have at some point in the future. No problem. Because once you move to the United States, you're no good to me. You don't have access to the information anymore. So, I need for you to stay in place as long as you can. It's not uncommon to relocate people to the United States. &gt;&gt; Which country would you think is the toughest to recruit? Which which people do you think were the toughest? Because you've dealt with a lot of people.

[48:30] &gt;&gt; Was there a specific nationality that you think they were the toughest or they were the longest for me to recruit? &gt;&gt; A lot of them are tough. In my own personal experience, the Iraqis were the toughest because they were so afraid of their own government. They just didn't trust that I was actually an American. They were afraid that I was an Iraqi putting on an American accent to trap them. And so, cuz they would do something like that. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And then what? If they say yes and

[49:00] I'm an Iraqi, they're going to be executed. If they say no, the government's going to say, "Why did the CIA approach you?" Because you're weak, so they're going to get executed anyway. Then if they say yes and they get caught, they're going to get executed. So there's no there's no upside. &gt;&gt; Yeah. No upside. &gt;&gt; Mhm. So you finished with Greece and then you moved back to the US and you stayed there for a bit.

[49:30] &gt;&gt; Mhm. And then September 11th happened, &gt;&gt; right? &gt;&gt; Um, so what happened? Where were you in September 11th? &gt;&gt; I was at the at the uh CIA's headquarters. Um, I had a meeting at the White House that morning. Um, Kofheer Black, who was the director of CIA counterterrorism operations, and I had a meeting with Condisa Rice that morning. She was the national security adviser on a very what what in historical retrospect was a very stupid reason.

[50:00] There's a there's a minor almost unknown government office in Washington called the um government printing office. Okay. &gt;&gt; It's its own little tiny agency and what it does is it prints all of the government reports. okay, &gt;&gt; for the whole American government. And [snorts] they were going to print a book of declassified State Department cables

[50:30] and it was called Foreign Relations of the United States, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, 1949 to 1967. Nobody is going to read that book. But in the thousand pages, there were three names of people who had been CIA informants who were still alive. And there's a law in the United States that if the US government exposes your

[51:00] name, we have to offer you American citizenship. &gt;&gt; These people are like a hundred years old. They were recruited in in the in the 50s. So, we thought it would be easier and faster if we asked Condisa Rice to pause the publication of the book just so we could pull the pages out. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; So, at 8:50 that morning, the driver called me to say he was at the the east

[51:30] entrance to the building to take us to the White House. I walked over to Kofheer Black's office to tell him the car was ready. And these were the days before you could watch TV on a computer. So Kofheer's secretary had a small TV on her desk and it was on the news. It had the news playing. And I looked at the desk and I said I said, "What happened to the World Trade Center?" And she said, "A plane flew into it." And I said, because I'm

[52:00] stupid sometimes, &gt;&gt; I said, "You know what? That happened once before in 1931. A plane flew into the Empire State Building, but it was very foggy and rainy, heavy rain that day. It's so clear today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And just as I said it, the second plane hit the North Tower. And she turned to me and she said, "Did you see that or did I imagine it?" I ran back to my office and I said, "Guys, two

[52:30] planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center. I think we're under attack. Everybody ran back up to the front to Kofheer's office." Now, we had we had TVs hanging from the the ceiling. By then, they were all on, you know, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Kal, Russia Today, everything, you know, from around the world, the big stations. And they were all showing the same thing. By then like 150 people had gathered. It

[53:00] was a very very large office. 150 people had gathered. And somebody behind me shouted, "Will somebody please lead and Kofheer, it was like a slap in his face. Yes." He says, "You go to the director's office and tell him this. You go to security. You go to operations." And we just stood there. We watched the World Trade Center burn. And then a third plane hit the Pentagon and somebody quietly said, "There's still a plane in the air. We should probably

[53:30] assume that it's headed here." And just then a CIA police officer came in. The CIA has its own police force called the Special Protective Office. And um he came in and he said, "Everybody evacuate." Nobody moved. &gt;&gt; So that third plane hit the Pentagon. And then the the policeman came back in and he said, "If you don't evacuate, you'll be arrested." We were like, "Now, what do we do?" Kofheer said, "Everybody go. Just go."

[54:00] &gt;&gt; I got in my car. It took me two hours to just get out of my parking space. This was unprecedented. Nothing like this had ever happened before in American history. So you have tens of thousands of people all trying to evacuate it at the same time through just two exits. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Two hours to get out of my parking space. I only live 10 kilometers from the CIA's headquarters. I got halfway and I abandoned my car. I just pulled

[54:30] over to the side of the road, turned it off, and just started walking because I couldn't move. &gt;&gt; Yeah. It was just stopped. I got to the Teddy Roosevelt bridge that connects Arlington, Virginia with Washington DC and I saw the deputy national security adviser and he had no shoes. And I remember thinking, my god, this is a catastrophe. &gt;&gt; Why did he have no shoes? &gt;&gt; He ran away so fast from the White House that he left his shoes. &gt;&gt; Oh wow. &gt;&gt; And I thought this this is how bad this

[55:00] is. He's supposed to be at the White House protecting us and he ran away with no shoes. So, I went back to my apartment. My girlfriend, who later became my wife, she was also a senior CIA officer, um she she called me and she said, "I'll meet you at your place." So, we climbed to the roof of the building and we watched the Pentagon burn for a couple of hours and I said, "This is ridiculous. we should give blood or

[55:30] something. So, we went downstairs. We found a Red Cross blood mobile, the big bus where they take your blood. But the line was so long, they told us it would be 24 hours before we could give blood. And I said, "I'm going back to the office. This is ridiculous." So, I walked back to my car on the highway, got in, I drove across the grass, went back to CIA, and I didn't leave for the next four days. when I got tired, I just went underneath my desk and I slept for

[56:00] an hour, two hours and um just got up and started working again. Everybody did that. &gt;&gt; Before we get to January 2002 is when you flew to Pakistan. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; You mentioned call for black. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; And flashback before before what has happened in a few months, right? &gt;&gt; You had people visiting from the Middle East, an intelligence uh agency, an ally &gt;&gt; coming in to get some training. &gt;&gt; Yes. And then you tried to get Co for Black to come and say hello to them. &gt;&gt; I actually didn't. Um that was July the

[56:30] 6th, 2001. I remember the date clearly because it became so important in my own personal story. You're right. That morning we had a delegation of um Arab intelligence officers. &gt;&gt; So you're not allowed to say which &gt;&gt; they won't they won't let me say which one. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; It's one that you know quite well. And um this was a completely normal thing. We would do it literally every day where we would have delegations of foreign intelligence services. We come, we give them a day full of briefings and then we

[57:00] take them to meet the director of the CIA and they take a picture together shaking hands. Then we exchange gifts and that night we take them to a very expensive restaurant and the next day we do it all over again with somebody else. That day we had these Arabs, close friends, and I scheduled the day of briefings, including at 10 o'clock that morning, a briefing on al-Qaeda. But I scheduled it with a very young junior analyst, 25 years old, young kid.

[57:30] Instead of the kid coming, Kofheer Black came in with the director of operations from the Osama bin Laden group called Alex Station. And I was so surprised. I I stood up and I said, "Oh," I said, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is this is Kofheer Black. He's the director of counterterrorism for the CIA." And I introduced them. They were all majors and colonels in their service. And Kofheer sat down and he was very, very

[58:00] serious. He said, "Something terrible is going to happen. We don't know where and we don't know when, but we know it's going to be an attack on a huge scale. We're hearing chatter from the al-Qaeda camps. [snorts] We're hearing camp commanders speaking to their students and crying on the phone and saying, "I'll see you in paradise."

[58:30] We're hearing code words for a massive attack. The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities of honey. there's going to be a great football match. There's going to be a huge wedding. He said, "We know what this means. We just don't know when and where." And then he said these words that still stick with me. He said, "I'm begging you if you have any sources inside Akaida. Please help us." And they just sat there and looked at him. And then he stood up and he shook

[59:00] their hands and he walked out. That afternoon at five o'clock we finished the briefings. So they went back to the hotel. I'm going to pick them up two, three hours later for dinner. But I went back to Kofer's office to thank him. And I said, "Kofer, I wanted to thank you for spending the time speaking to those guys, but I have to ask you." I said, "I don't work on al-Qaeda. Were you saying that just for them, like to be dramatic, &gt;&gt; or were you serious?" And he said, "Oh, I'm deadly serious. Something terrible

[59:30] is going to happen." And then it did. &gt;&gt; So you need So the CIA had like knew something's going to happen. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; There are so many conspiracies floating out there, John. As as you know, um some say it's an inside job. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Some say the CIA knew they had all of these indicators that Osama bin Laden had his people come to the US and &gt;&gt; that is true. &gt;&gt; He people from the had came to the US and started doing training. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; Uh on flying um

[1:00:00] &gt;&gt; correct airplanes. So those were those indicators were there, huh? &gt;&gt; Yeah. Let me start by saying it was not an inside job. It was not the Bush family. It was not the also family. It was not the space aliens or the lizard people or the Jews. It was al-Qaeda. Number one, &gt;&gt; were they capable of that? &gt;&gt; Absolutely. Yes. &gt;&gt; Okay. Number two, the CIA was the guilty party here because the CIA did know that the hijackers were in the United States.

[1:00:30] The CIA didn't tell the FBI. Now remember, the CIA can only operate overseas. The FBI can only operate in the United States. The CIA is not permitted to make a recruitment inside the United States. The FBI has to make the recruitment. But the CIA and the FBI hated each other so much that the CIA never told the FBI that the hijackers were in the United States. And the FBI never told the CIA

[1:01:00] that they had intelligence that the hijackers were going to use the airplanes as the weapons. Do you understand what I mean? &gt;&gt; Yeah, of course I understand what you mean. So that information was already there. &gt;&gt; It was there. It's that it wasn't shared. &gt;&gt; Wasn't connected. It wasn't shared. &gt;&gt; Right. And in fact, it wasn't until 2009 that the CIA and the FBI had compatible computer systems. Before that they just had to manually share. &gt;&gt; Exactly. But they hated each other. So

[1:01:30] they didn't even do that. In 2002 when I was in Pakistan just &gt;&gt; pushing ahead for a minute. If I wanted to write a cable, I wrote cables all day every day. You have to inform headquarters what you're doing. But if I had to write a cable, I would say to CIA headquarters, to this office, that office, and the other office, add CC to the White House, to the State Department, to the Defense Department. I could not send a cable to the FBI. The system just couldn't handle it.

[1:02:00] &gt;&gt; It would be like me saying CC to Fisel. You don't have a CIA computer. You can't receive this cable. The FBI couldn't receive the cable. And similarly, the FBI could only send cables to other FBI offices. They couldn't send it to anybody else. &gt;&gt; So, there was a gap in communications. &gt;&gt; A terrible one. A deadly one. A deadly one that resulted in in the murder of 3,000 Americans in one day. Mosad, were they involved? [sighs] &gt;&gt; My own personal belief is yes, not

[1:02:30] necessarily in a direct way. We've all heard the story of the dancing Israelis. Yeah, &gt;&gt; they were arrested and they were held for &gt;&gt; so for context for the listener. &gt;&gt; Yeah. So there were there were there was a vanload of Israeli citizens that were arrested in New York City several days before 9/11. They were taking pictures of the World Trade Center, but they were doing it in this odd way and and taking pictures of other sensitive targets in

[1:03:00] lower Manhattan. It's not a crime to take pictures in the United States. And so they were eventually released. They were all Israeli citizens and they kept saying, "We're the good guys. We're the good guys. We're Israelis. We're with you." They were released. But then on 911, there was a larger group of Israeli citizens who were dancing in the streets, right? Because we had been attacked. Now, they knew the the reason why they were dancing is because they knew how the United States would react. &gt;&gt; So, they were celebrating the reaction.

[1:03:30] &gt;&gt; They were celebrating the reaction. We're going to go out and we're going to kill a million Muslims, which is exactly what happened. the number may be two million if you count in Afghanistan. I'm sorry, if you count in Iraq. &gt;&gt; And so, um, they were arrested and they were held for a 100 days. Now, many of them had direct ties to the Israeli government. That has led me to believe that the Israelis I the Israelis were not involved with al-Qaeda and the planning,

[1:04:00] but I believe the Israelis had infiltrated al-Qaeda. They knew that the attack was coming. They knew that would be good for Israel and so they allowed the attack to happen. And every time we would ask the Israelis, "Do you know anything about this group?" They would say, "No, we don't know anything." Of course they knew. The Israelis are the best intelligence service in the world. &gt;&gt; Are they better than the CIA? &gt;&gt; I think they are. Yeah, they're certainly deadlier. &gt;&gt; What do you mean? You know, in the CIA, we have we have laws that are not always respected, but

[1:04:30] we have pretty clear laws on um assassinations. Between 1975 and September 11th, 2001, it was illegal for the CIA to assassinate anybody. And it's because the CIA used to assassinate all kinds of people before 1975, killing world leaders, overthrowing governments. We had to stop that. And so 1975, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 12333 and it said, "You cannot kill people.

[1:05:00] Period." A couple of days after September 11th, President Bush amended 1233 to allow political assassinations if the if the target of the assassination poses what is called a clear and present danger to the United States. Now, what's that mean? &gt;&gt; That's subjective. &gt;&gt; Very much so. And that has been amended to this day. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; And so the CIA can kill anybody that it wants to kill. &gt;&gt; And they have a meeting every Tuesday on

[1:05:30] that. &gt;&gt; They have a meeting every Tuesday morning at the White House and they come up with what's called the Tuesday morning kill list. And it's it's mostly lawyers who are in this meeting plus CIA operations people. And they come up with a list of people they want to kill that week. The the teams go all around the world. They kill the targets and then they meet again the next Tuesday and come up with the next list of people to kill. It's sick. &gt;&gt; Very. &gt;&gt; So, Mossad is deadlier. &gt;&gt; Oh, Msad, they'll kill you if you look

[1:06:00] at them. Funny. &gt;&gt; Sure. And um you know what you mentioned when you had the Arab intelligence agents that came and then after he said you just mentioned how you said how the the protocol is at the end you'll shake hands, you'll exchange gifts. I've heard stories about the gifts that uh the Mossad used to give the &gt;&gt; Yeah, we we don't uh we don't accept gifts anymore from the Mossad. Um because every gift they gave us had listening devices built in inside and we x-ray everything and we we would say

[1:06:30] guys you have to stop trying to bug our conference rooms. We hate it and we catch you every single time. So Mossad for the last 40 years now, Mossad has not been allowed inside CIA headquarters. We meet with them outside in a private office because we can't trust them. They're constantly trying to bug us, constantly trying to recruit our people. In my very first briefing as a CIA officer, I'd been at the CIA for

[1:07:00] about six weeks and uh my boss said, "Listen, you're going to do your first briefing and it's going to be for Mossad and Shinbet." and he told me, "We we can't trust them, so they're not allowed in the building. We meet with them over here at this safe house." &gt;&gt; So Shinet is like the FBI. &gt;&gt; Shinet is like the FBI. The Israeli is like the &gt;&gt; Yes. And and they're both working in the Israeli embassy in Washington. &gt;&gt; So I was one of like

[1:07:30] 8, 10, 12 analysts. It was a whole bunch of analysts. And we're all sitting around this conference room table and the Mossad and Shinbet people are sitting across the table from us. And so the senior analyst starts and she says,"I the senior analyst and then the political analyst and the economics analyst and the military analyst and the oil analyst and this one and that one. I'm the last one because I'm the most junior." So I said, I'm going to back up so I can show you how how this went. I said, "My

[1:08:00] name is John Kuryaku." I was overt, not undercover. So I said, "My name is John Kuryaku and I'm going to brief you on Saddam Hussein's psychology." And the Shinbetk guy, he has his glasses like this and he says, "Spell your name." So I spell it, which made me angry. And then he says to me like this, "You are Jewish." And I said, "I am not recruitable. Don't

[1:08:30] even think about trying to recruit me." I was enraged. &gt;&gt; So afterwards, everybody was laughing and they said, "They've done that to all of us. Every one of us." &gt;&gt; They tried to talk &gt;&gt; right to your face, right in front of everybody. They tried to recruit you. I got back to the office. He said, "My boss said, "How did it go?" And I said, "I'm so mad right now." And he said, "Mossad tried to recruit you, didn't they?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "They do that to everybody. They're just crude

[1:09:00] about it. just like a punch in the face. &gt;&gt; So where does that come from there? The that courage that was it courage would I say courage or that um you know when someone doesn't have uh right there's no filter. No filter. Yeah. I think it's because they really truly believe that they are alone in the world. For example, on my very first day at the CIA, we had a series of briefings. The director came, "Welcome to the CIA. Congratulations.

[1:09:30] And then the director of personnel, the director of health insurance, the director of whatever, the director of security. So he told us things like, "There's a restaurant right down the street, a steakhouse. Don't ever go there." He says, &gt;&gt; "Because it's the restaurant that's closest to the CIA. The KGB thinks that we all go there. So they all go there. So the place is only KGB.

[1:10:00] So we never go inside. I've never been in there still to this day. So he said the Israeli embassy has a representative from Mossad and a representative from Shinbet, right? And they conduct liaison with us. But the FBI has identified 187 Mossad agents in the United States not declared to the US government spread all around the country to steal our

[1:10:30] defense secrets. And I raised my hand. I said, "Why? We give them 99% of our defense secrets." And he said, "Exactly. They're here to steal the last 1%." And that's what they do. The Israelis are not friends of the United States. &gt;&gt; If the KGB did that, what would be what would be the reaction of the United States? &gt;&gt; We would arrest those sources and prosecute them just like we did with Jonathan Pard, right? Jonathan Pard was an American um Navy

[1:11:00] uh analyst, Navy intelligence analyst. He was also Jewish and the Israelis recruited him to give them top secret information on uh the Soviet Union. But the Israelis gave the information to the KGB and in exchange the KGB allowed the Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel. So Pard was arrested. He was charged with espionage,

[1:11:30] convicted. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; And spent 30 years in prison. He did the the whole 30 years and then when he got out uh Sheldon Adlesen, a rich American uh Jew, provided his private jet, flew Pard back to Israel. He was met at the airport by Benjamin Netanyahu. When he got off the plane, he kissed the ground in Israel and Netanyahu gave him Israeli citizenship and now he's running

[1:12:00] for the Knesset. &gt;&gt; Wow. anybody else would have died in prison or eventually would have been the subject of a prisoner exchange. Him, he was one of the most damaging spies in American history and now he's seen as some kind of a hero which makes me so angry. So this brings us to confronting the whole situation of the Israeli involvement in the US. And that's something I think is very critical to talk about now, especially

[1:12:30] with what's happening in the world. And we're not here to talk about taking sides as much as laying down the facts and take and being on the right side of history &gt;&gt; in terms of where what's our take position in terms of how much Israel has influence in the United States &gt;&gt; and how do they have that much influence and they're able to get away with a lot of things and a lot has to do with um their influence, right? Um, and so if we were to talk about this a little bit, um, how is Israel why how does Israel

[1:13:00] have that much influence in the US? Where does it come from? And and why can't anyone do anything about it? Let me preface my answer by telling you that a few weeks ago, an obscure pro-Israel journal, scholarly journal, published an article written by the Israeli foreign minister's political director in which he said that I was a noted anti-semite.

[1:13:30] &gt;&gt; You, &gt;&gt; me, &gt;&gt; because he criticizes &gt;&gt; because I'm pro-Arab and I I criticize Israel's u uh operations in the West Bank and Gaza. Okay. noted anti-semite. Now, this is something they do on purpose. If you don't tow the Israeli line, you're anti-Semitic even though you're not. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Or in the case of any Arab, actually very Semitic because you're Arab. &gt;&gt; So, um, [snorts] people like Tucker

[1:14:00] Carlson. Tucker Carlson was named a couple of weeks ago as the anti-semite of the year. I know Tucker. He's a friend of mine. There's not an anti-semitic bone in his body. &gt;&gt; Yeah, I met Tucker as well. &gt;&gt; He supports Palestinian human rights. That's it. &gt;&gt; He's a guy who wants to put American America first. Exactly. He's he's asking the same questions that I'm asking now. &gt;&gt; Exactly. Right. &gt;&gt; And I just want to know why. &gt;&gt; It is. This is this pro-Israel thing has been going on for so long that most

[1:14:30] Americans, I think, have fallen into its propaganda. And it's led by it. It's led by wealthy, in most cases, Jewish voters who have donated money to Apac, the um the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is essentially the Israel lobby. &gt;&gt; And they spend millions, tens of millions of dollars every single year on political races across the country at

[1:15:00] every level. It's not just Congress, it's the state races and even the local races. Oh, so they from from the grassroots &gt;&gt; from the grassroots. And I'll get back to that in a second. If you are not 100% pro-Israel, they will run a candidate against you and they'll spend millions of dollars to beat you and they're successful. &gt;&gt; So, they're playing the system. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And they've they've spread this idea around the United States that has taken hold that if you're not pro-

[1:15:30] Israel, like somebody asked me this the the other day, are you pro- Israel? And I said, "No, you're with the Iranians." It's like, "What? No, &gt;&gt; no, I'm not with Iranians." Like, "What's wrong with you?" Or, "You're with al-Qaeda." No, I'm not with al-Qaeda. Are you crazy? I just don't think that the Israeli policy of killing everybody is a viable policy. You know, you can't under

[1:16:00] you can't have undergone a terrorist attack and then have your policy as to kill every man, woman, and child who breathes in Gaza. That's not a policy. That's a genocide. There are very clear laws about this to which the Israelis, by the way, happen to be signitories. You cannot kill civilians. And they do it every single day. Literally every single day. with what you've said, I think it's very relevant to speak about the about Iran and the relationship

[1:16:30] between Mossad &gt;&gt; and you have a book uh about it as well, right? &gt;&gt; Um it was released in 2000 uh about about Iran in specific. Oh, no. That that one was released in 20 &gt;&gt; sorry 2020 2020. Was it &gt;&gt; 2020? &gt;&gt; Sorry. 2020. Sorry. &gt;&gt; In 2020. Um that book was released and because America was very close to going to war um during the Trump presidency, the first term. &gt;&gt; That's right. &gt;&gt; With Iran. So you wrote a book about it

[1:17:00] and you wrote it with with with another person, &gt;&gt; Gareth Porter. &gt;&gt; Gareth Porter. and um you explained the history of of of the relationship between Iran and the United States. And there was one thing that I'm going to quote from the book that's going to set this conversation is you said that you argue that one of the reasons US policy had repeatedly failed according to the book is a deep ignorance of Iranian history. Um, and you've you've also produced other layers and and since you've

[1:17:30] already mentioned Israel, how would we look at the Iranian US relationship? And is it inevitable that they're going to go to war? That's the one of the toughest questions. It doesn't have to be inevitable. But I will say that that I think the United States is to is more to blame than the Iranian side for the the current status quo.

[1:18:00] Americans just simply don't understand. Americans as a people don't understand what happened in 1953. They don't understand that Iran had democratic elections. They chose a democratically elected prime minister, Muhammad Masadek, and the UK and the US overthrew him and installed a dictator, uh, Muhammad Resa. Americans don't have any idea that that

[1:18:30] happened. It's not something that's that's discussed in the United States. It's not something that's taught in the schools. It's just ignored. But one of the other things that the that the American people don't understand is the scar that this has left in modern day Iran. &gt;&gt; In Iran, it's as though it happened yesterday. That's how fresh it is. This this outside uh uh interference. Um, in in 1979, November 4th, 1979, uh,

[1:19:00] Iranian students overran the American embassy, what was left of the American embassy in Tehran, and took hostages that they held for 444 days. They didn't do that in a vacuum. They had reasons for doing that. I disagree with those reasons. There are international laws that govern this kind of thing. Um, but the Americans are only taught the American side. They're not taught the reason why this happened. They're not taught about Sabak

[1:19:30] and the horrors that Saddak, you know, inflicted on the Iranian people. They're not taught about why we have so many Iranians in the United States that they were forced to flee their country in 1978 and 1979 or subsequently. And so I think part of the problem is this ignorance &gt;&gt; of recent history, this ignorance of Iran and Iranian society. And instead, you know, it's it's very

[1:20:00] easy to just demonize a person. That way you don't have to understand the background. You can say you can say Muslims are terrorists, right? Muslims are in ISIS. They're in al-Qaeda. They're in Hezbollah. So that means Muslims are terrorists. Well, that's ridiculous and it's wrong. But it's hard to educate yourself on the history. It takes time. It takes sensitivity. You have to have an eye for nuance. You know, that would be like

[1:20:30] like me saying, "Well, we have these uh militias in the Western United States. They're all conservative Christians, so Christians are terrorists." Well, that's ridiculous, too. &gt;&gt; It is. But most Americans don't have the desire &gt;&gt; to understand the nuance. So what made see even we're going to speak about 2001 and what happened that the stereotypes of of of Muslims but Sean why was there

[1:21:00] a almost like a deliberate and you mentioned also in the book that there has been for nearly three decades over five different administrations US Iran policy had been enveloped in a political narrative. &gt;&gt; Yes. that portrayed the Islamic Republic as a secretly as secretly working on the ultimate goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. &gt;&gt; Right? &gt;&gt; So there's there's there's a people working in the United States wanting the administrations to believe that Iran's working towards a

[1:21:30] nuclear weapon that's going to blow up the West and and the US and that's dangerous for them. Um so so why is that happening? Why is there a deliberate push in a way where you think that is does not represent the reality of Iran? &gt;&gt; I might argue sometimes a little bit different because we know throughout his history history Persia as an empire always wanted to &gt;&gt; take over the the Middle East. Um &gt;&gt; so from when we look at Iran and we look

[1:22:00] at Persia, we know whether it's an Islamic republic or a liberal republic or whatever it is &gt;&gt; at the at the core of it is Persia and they want to &gt;&gt; which could be a hegemon. Yeah. &gt;&gt; Yeah. I listen I lived in Bahrain for two years and they were obsessed with the Iranians and the Iranians were genuinely a threat to the Bahraini government. So yeah, I I get it. I understand it. Um, at the same time, looking specifically at the Iranian nuclear issue, the CIA has repeatedly released national

[1:22:30] intelligence estimates or special national intelligence estimates saying that they do not have any intelligence showing that the Iranians are attempting to make a weapon, a nuclear weapon. &gt;&gt; What doesn't why doesn't it translate into the the into the White House? Why is there a disconnect between those reports and the White House? because at the CIA they're not subject to political pressure from Apac or from Jewish voters. At the White House they are. And so, you know, the intelligence may say

[1:23:00] one thing, policy is going to say something that's different. That's how you get elected. &gt;&gt; So, the the CIA, if you go to the CIA today, they know that Iran &gt;&gt; isn't a nuclear threat. &gt;&gt; Correct. And they release those reports. They're released to the public. They're declassified. Mhm. &gt;&gt; Wow. &gt;&gt; Yeah. Yeah. It's a real disconnect. &gt;&gt; I don't even know how to reply to this. So, &gt;&gt; see, but the thing is the the Israel for

[1:23:30] the Israelis, Iran is an existential threat, right? Iran has what 92 million people. It's a gigantic country in terms of land mass. It has a history of threatening its close neighbors, including Kuwait. We all know this as a historical fact. There used to be an active cell here in Kuwait that was financed by seriously threatened the Kuwaiti government. Uh so the the Iranians are not nifes in this thing. They're not

[1:24:00] innocents in in this uh in this thing. At the same time, I get that the Israelis are afraid of Iran. I get it. But that doesn't mean then that the United States has to attack Iran and overthrow its government at all costs just to protect what may or may not be a real threat to Israel. &gt;&gt; Right. &gt;&gt; Are like I don't even have the words. I'm struggling to get words out. Is it up to Benjamin Netanyahu to come

[1:24:30] to Washington and to look the American people in the eye on television and say, "I want you to send your children to the Middle East to potentially die to protect Israel." &gt;&gt; Yeah, he did that in Congress. &gt;&gt; Yeah, I'm not doing that. I have five children, four sons. I'm not sending them to die for Israel. No. No. You need to fix your foreign policy. Maybe start murder start stop Let me do that again. maybe stop murdering Palestinians and you won't have these constant political pressures.

[1:25:00] &gt;&gt; Yeah. So the the the Lud party and the farright party of um &gt;&gt; Smotri and &gt;&gt; Yeah. And and and even though the far right party even throughout history before Smidge and Benavir and their influence Yes. on on on the administration and um speak to me about that. So how does that work in the US? Um, and I've I've seen old speeches for Netanyahu be while he was prime minister and the times when he wasn't when we

[1:25:30] calculated his the time he is a prime minister, it's almost 20 years. So that's more &gt;&gt; he's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history. &gt;&gt; And now he's the longest serving prime minister in the Middle East. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; And he says and and when they say that they have democracy, I I I look at this fact as well. So that aside, how are we supposed to how do we see why is there so much influence or is there so much influence by the liquid party as you state in your book specifically the party or the farright movement of Israel

[1:26:00] on US policy or is it just Apac is just the whole Israel thing? I want I want to differentiate. &gt;&gt; Yeah, I think it's I think it's a combination of the two. But don't underestimate Netanyahu and his and his political prowess. He's a brilliant politician. Plus, he's born and raised in the United States. He speaks English like an American. Um, and he's been around for so long that he's established these relationships on Capitol Hill that others just don't have. Couple that with

[1:26:30] the money and the political pressure coming from Apac and and you have a juggernaut. You can't lose. There's there's another thing too there. There was something there was a nent movement in the United States called the BDS movement uh boycott devest and sanction and states immediately at Apex urging immediately began working against BDS. So that 35 of the maybe 38 now of the 50

[1:27:00] states have anti-BDS legislation. So for example, if I gave a speech in any one of these 38 states and I said I believe that we should boycott Israeli goods and we should devest in from investments in Israeli companies and we should sanction Israel until they start to respect human rights. I can be arrested for saying that. &gt;&gt; Wow. In the US. &gt;&gt; In the US. &gt;&gt; But don't you have amend it first

[1:27:30] amendment rights? Oh, don't we have first amendment rights to freedom of speech? Yes. So, how is it that these laws can can run in parallel with the American Constitution? Hasn't been decided by the Supreme Court yet, but it's coming to that. I'll give you another example. A good friend of mine who is pro Palestinian was invited to give a speech at the University of Georgia. So, when she went, she was told, "In order to be paid, you have to sign this pledge." And it was a pledge

[1:28:00] where she was pledging [snorts] support for Israel. It's like, "Wait a minute. I'm giving a speech at the University of Georgia. Why would I pledge my support for Israel? I don't support Israel." They said, "Then you can't you can't speak at the university. This is part of the BDS law. You have to say in writing, I support Israel or you can't work." And she said, "Forget it." So she sued. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And she won at the federal

[1:28:30] district court level and then at the circuit court level she lost. &gt;&gt; Why? &gt;&gt; Because they said that the state governments had passed this law saying that you are not allowed to take any state money unless you pledge your support for Israel. The reason they did that was to just allow the Supreme Court to make the final decision. So that's what we're waiting for now. &gt;&gt; That's crazy, huh? &gt;&gt; It's crazy. There was a there was an article I was in Miami just a couple of days ago and there was an article about

[1:29:00] a woman in Miami Beach. Miami Beach is very heavily Jewish. So she lives in Miami Beach and she wrote a Facebook post saying that she supported Palestinian human rights. Next thing you know, the very next day, police, we want to talk to you about that Facebook post. And she just closed the door, talked to my lawyer. So, is that where we are now? Where if you say you support Palestinian human rights, the police come to your house to

[1:29:30] investigate you? I'm willing to fight for that. &gt;&gt; Yeah. I think any what I think fighting for that is today it's human rights. It's it's Palestinian rights. Tomorrow it can be your rights. The next day you can't speak for Greek Greek rights. &gt;&gt; Exactly right. Exactly right. &gt;&gt; That issue represents a bigger issue where &gt;&gt; you should have free speech to speak about human rights issues. No one should stop you from doing that because we're all humans at the end of the day and if we see human suffering, we're supposed to stand up for that

[1:30:00] &gt;&gt; and we're supposed to be a nation of laws and we have laws that govern these kinds of issues. What the Israelis are doing is a violation of international law. It is ethnic cleansing and it's genocide. Just read the genocide law. It it's very specific &gt;&gt; and will show you in one reading that what the Israelis are doing is genocide and they have to stop. I say all the time I was on Pierce Morgan recently and I was fighting with Daniel Danny Ayalon

[1:30:30] the former head of Mossad and Alan Dersowitz and I was paired with uh Scott Horton who's a brilliant thinker and PICE asked me he meant it as the prelude to an attack. he was going to attack me. Do you believe that October 7th was a terrorist attack? I said, "Of course I do." &gt;&gt; Civilians were targeted. That's the definition of terrorism, right? To instill terror in the civilian population. Well, do you believe that um

[1:31:00] that Hamas is a terrorist organization? I said, "When it attacks civilians, yes, of course it's a terrorist organization." And then he kind of sat there because that wasn't the answer he was he was expecting. And he said, "Well, what what do you want Israel to do?" I said, "All I'm asking is that Israel respect the law. The law to which they are a signatory you can't have as a policy to kill everybody. That's not a policy. That's genocide." And I said, "The Israelis of all people

[1:31:30] should know about genocide." But circling back to them respecting the law and then the the what made us open this conversation about Israel is them not respecting the laws in the US when it came to CIA and Mossad. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; You knowing that information and you today being an ex CIA agent &gt;&gt; standing up to to Israel and and and calling them out. &gt;&gt; Um don't isn't that a little bit dangerous for you? &gt;&gt; It can be. &gt;&gt; It can be dangerous.

[1:32:00] &gt;&gt; It can be. already I'm being accused of being an anti-semite, which is ridiculous. Um, I would counter that I'm pro-American. And if it were the Greeks who were infiltrating the US government to steal secrets, I would call the Greeks on the carpet. But, uh, yeah, it can be. And and already it's it's not just me. I'm a minor player in this issue, but people like Tucker Carlson being branded as anti-semite of the year. Do you think Tucker Carlson can be assassinated at

[1:32:30] any moment or something's going to happen to him? &gt;&gt; Sure, I do think that's a possibility after we saw with what happened to Charlie Kirk. Absolutely. It's something that I would worry about &gt;&gt; if I were Tucker. &gt;&gt; Even the laptop thing that about Iran now just supposed to close off Iran the laptop files. So for the listeners here, there was uh some files that were given to the opposition, the Iranian opposition that were based in London &gt;&gt; and they used those files to basically build a case to sanction Iran, go to war

[1:33:00] with Iran with what's happening today. Um it's it all comes back to those uh laptop files where they were given documents supposedly from inside of Iran. &gt;&gt; Correct. &gt;&gt; Saying that uh the Iranians are up to no good and they're building a nuclear weapon. Right. &gt;&gt; Are those files that the files that they got are the actual significant files? &gt;&gt; No, I I doubt it. I doubt it. The uh the Jerusalem Post, the big Israeli newspaper, said just a week ago that it

[1:33:30] was the Mossad that was organizing these protests in Iran. Um, we know that the that the Mossad works very closely with the Mujahin, the MEK, which is a cult, a cult-based terrorist group. Um, we know that the Mossad works with the Kurds in Iran. We know that Mossad has bases in Azarbaijan where they launch many of these operations from. And so as soon as I read that

[1:34:00] file, I thought this this is clear clearly an Israeli invention. I I don't believe it at all. I think it just was &gt;&gt; even the the European intelligence agencies said that they are not very reliable sources that they got which built the case in the Trump Obama administration. &gt;&gt; Absolutely. &gt;&gt; To go after Iran, right? &gt;&gt; Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. The the Israelis are very very good at these. How are they really good when they're they're a small country at the end of the day, but the amount of Mossad agents

[1:34:30] and the amount of infiltration that it's pretty crazy, right? You wouldn't expect that from a very small country. &gt;&gt; No, you wouldn't. And we're talking just about Mossad. Imagine what Shinbed is doing inside Israel and the Palestinian territories. &gt;&gt; Yeah, it's pretty incredible. &gt;&gt; Very. Okay. So, go back going back to 911. You were in the office. Um that happened. You left. You saw the guy from the White House. Um, &gt;&gt; what's his name? What's the position

[1:35:00] again? &gt;&gt; He was the deputy national security adviser. &gt;&gt; And then he and then you went back to the office. Your your girlfriend at the time was also working at the CIA. You met at the office. You were we left it at you. You used to work long hours and you slept under the um the table sometimes. &gt;&gt; Yes. And then in January 2002, you flew to to Pakistan and that's when you were when you went on a mission to Pakistan. That was 3 4 months after

[1:35:30] 9/11. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; So you went to Pakistan and your objective was to find Abua. &gt;&gt; Yes. That &gt;&gt; well that that no that's not how it started out. That became the objective. Okay. So, I went to Pakistan as the as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations. Uh, we just didn't have anybody on the ground. We we were certainly hunting al-Qaeda in in Afghanistan, &gt;&gt; but no one was in Pakistan. &gt;&gt; No. No. And I was very very fortunate in

[1:36:00] that there were seven old men who had all been in very senior positions. All of them had been either director or deputy director of neareastern operations and one of them had been the deputy director of the CIA. Okay. &gt;&gt; So they all volunteered to come back after 911 as contractors. We have a rule that contractors can't manage people. So I was the boss and they all worked for

[1:36:30] me. It's funny. But to tell you the truth, I learned more from those men in that period of time in Pakistan than I learned through the entirety of my career. &gt;&gt; You had the best people around you, &gt;&gt; the best teachers I could have imagined. Brilliant. Every one of them. And so when I first arrived on my very first day, the station chief said to me, "I want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down a terrorist safe house." And I said,

[1:37:00] "Okay." I went back to my office with a a legal pad and a pen and I remember writing 0200 at the top of the paper thinking, well, if I do a counterterrorism operation, I would want it to be dark. I would want everybody to be asleep, right? So 0200, 2:00 in the morning. And then I thought, well, I need weapons, ammunition, bulletproof vests, secure communications, scrambled walkie-talkies, battering rams to break the door down.

[1:37:30] So, I went to to the chief and I said, "I I have a list of things I need. It's going to cost about $50,000." He said, "Just put it on your CIA credit card." So, I went to a website, galls.com in Kentucky. It's a police supply house. I ordered everything I needed, put it on my credit card. They put it in the diplomatic pouch. It arrived about a week later. And then I got a tip that there were al-Qaeda fighters in a safe house in Islamabad. So, I went

[1:38:00] downstairs in the embassy to the FBI. I said, "Hey, I want to hit this house tonight. You want to go with me?" Of course, they have to go with me because 9/11 was still an open criminal investigation. &gt;&gt; And then you have to approach ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service, because it's their country. &gt;&gt; Are they good? I heard that they're good. Some people say that they're good. Are they good? &gt;&gt; You know, they're not good. &gt;&gt; Yeah, they are. They are good. &gt;&gt; But the reason why I pause is because in my view, there are two parallel ISIS. They were the counterterrorism officers

[1:38:30] that I worked with. Amazing. Okay. &gt;&gt; Amazing. Not afraid of anything. And they were all trained in the UK. And then on the other side is the guys who created the Kashmir separatist groups, the J Muhammad, you know, &gt;&gt; the other type of &gt;&gt; the other type with the very long beards, you know. I I didn't have anything to do with those guys and they certainly wanted

[1:39:00] nothing to do with me, but the the ISI officers that I worked with were amazing. Really great &gt;&gt; and I grew quite a bushy beard. &gt;&gt; What disguises? You do disguises a lot when you were CIA. &gt;&gt; Yeah, we do. We have a whole division that's just disguises. Yeah. Mustache, beard, bald head. So, we had this tip. We went to the house 2:00 in the morning. Boop. We break the door down.

[1:39:30] Two 19year-old kids, they both just immediately start crying. And one asks if he can call his mother. I said, "No, you can't call your mother. They're from Tunisia." Okay. &gt;&gt; So, we put them in handcuffs. They're crying. We put them in the police car, took them to the Raul Pindy jail. And I said to my colleagues, "Wow, that was easy. Oh my god." Like, "That's al-Qaeda. That's what we're so afraid of. They're children."

[1:40:00] So, a couple nights later, I got a call from a friendly Arab intelligence officer who had a reputation for being lazy. He was a brigadier general. and he called me and he says, "A little bird told me that you're the person to talk to uh about these uh safe houses." And I said, "Yeah, I'm the guy. Why don't you come over and have lunch and we can have a conversation." He came to the embassy. The embassy had a gigantic uh cafeteria

[1:40:30] slashrest slash nightclub. So, we had a nice lunch. He gave me the little piece of paper with the address on it. I said, "Thank you very much." We put the team together. We broke down the door. That was an important one. &gt;&gt; Why? &gt;&gt; Because they were all members of uh Egyptian Islamic Jihad &gt;&gt; who worked with uh &gt;&gt; with al-Qaeda. &gt;&gt; What's his name? &gt;&gt; Uh the ambari. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; These were these were important people. And I thought, hey, this this was good.

[1:41:00] &gt;&gt; Good leads. So we can we can shake them down and &gt;&gt; Exactly. And and get more leads. &gt;&gt; Then I came up with an idea that I'm actually very proud of. We had CIA officers all the way up and down the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was almost impossible to protect these guys. They're by themselves in these isolated villages. So I said to my boss, "Let's pull everybody off the border."

[1:41:30] &gt;&gt; He said, "But then they'll al-Qaeda will enter Pakistan." I said, "Yeah, but we want them to enter enter Pakistan because then they're going to end up in these safe houses. They're going to make a mistake. They always do. Yeah. They're on the phone. They're on the email. They're walking around the souk, whatever. And then we grab everybody. We take the whole house. So instead of catching one guy, two guys, we catch five, 10, 20 at a time." He said, "Actually, that's a good idea. Let's do that." And so we took everybody off the border

[1:42:00] and they just like a flood they came across from Tora Bora. &gt;&gt; Why? Why is it better for them to be in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan? &gt;&gt; Cuz it's easier to catch them in a city than it is in the mountains. &gt;&gt; No. Why is it better for them to come to Pashawa? &gt;&gt; Because we were bombing the out of &gt;&gt; their their locations. Yeah. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And so they came and then we started getting lots of tips about lots of safe the safe houses. And then one day in

[1:42:30] February, it was the end of the first week of February, I got a call very early in the morning on the weekend. And it was the the weekend in Pakistan is Friday and Saturday. And Saturday was like the only day I would allow myself the luxury of sleeping in until 7 or 8. We worked seven days a week, 14, 16 hours a day. Totally normal. &gt;&gt; When would you wake up? Usually 4 or 5. &gt;&gt; Usually, yeah. 4 5:00. I'd be at the office by 6:00 or 6:30. &gt;&gt; Oh, early days. &gt;&gt; Early. Yeah. And then you work until 8,

[1:43:00] nine o'clock at night. It was normal. So, um, my boss woke me up early on this Saturday morning. And he said, "Uh, come in right away. Something's come up." So, I jump in the car, I drive to the embassy. Everybody's already there. the the station chief and the deputy chief, the FBI chief um the chief of overall operations and me and uh and the station chief said, "We got word uh early this morning that

[1:43:30] Abu Zuba is somewhere in Pakistan and we have to catch him." And everybody turns and looks at me. I said, "Guys," I said, "This country is the size of Texas. It has 200 million people in it." What do you mean he's somewhere in Pakistan? Go catch him. &gt;&gt; It's not possible. He said, 'Well, you'll think of something. I go back to my office like, are they out of their minds? So, I sent a couple cables to the CIA to

[1:44:00] friendly, you know, intelligence services. And I said, "Help me out here. What do we know about Abu Zuba and his movements?" They said, "He's constantly moving." Pashesaw, Islamabad, Rahul, Pindi, Karachi, Lahor, Fislabad, Qued. He's constantly every day, literally constantly moving because he thinks we're after him. &gt;&gt; We weren't yet, but just to be safe, he was constantly on the move.

[1:44:30] So, I said, "You got to help me narrow it down. We can't like just run to all of these cities looking for him. We don't even know what he looks like." So, they sent me a picture. It was like a six-year-old passport photo. Very handsome young man, thin, beard and mustache. I said, "Well, that's a help, but this passport picture is from six years ago.

[1:45:00] We don't have any idea what he looks like now." They sent me more than a hundred different pictures. Mustache, no mustache, beard, no beard, no mustache and beard with mustache and beard. generate those or &gt;&gt; they generated them. The computer generated them. Glasses, no glasses, sunglasses, hat, shawar, kami, disha. &gt;&gt; So So they had all of this technology back in 200 &gt;&gt; 2002. Yeah. &gt;&gt; 2002. &gt;&gt; In the end, he didn't look anything like any of those pictures,

[1:45:30] &gt;&gt; but it was a it was a try. And then I got a call saying, "Okay, we're trying to narrow it down. He's moving constantly back and forth between Fiselabad and Lahore. Okay, there is a toll road that connects Fiselabad with Lahore. First of all, I had never heard of Fiselabad until we started looking for him. It's a it's a city of 7 million people. It's gigantic. I never heard of the place. It's named after King Fisel. And um Lahore, of course, has you know

[1:46:00] 12 million people. It's gigantic. It's sort of the cultural capital of Pakistan. Lovely city. I really enjoyed my time there. And so there's this toll road. It's about 50 miles from one city to the other. And at the halfway point, the road just ends in the middle of nowhere. And it's just a dirt track for the last 25 miles to fab. How can you have a city of 20 or a

[1:46:30] city of 7 million people that's not connected to everything else with a an actual road &gt;&gt; and it's a major industry textile city &gt;&gt; textile it's the headquarters of the Pakistani textile industry exactly right so I said because I'm stupid sometimes as I said earlier I said you know what when I was in college when I was 20 years old I worked on a toll road in the United States my father was friendly with our state senator and the state senator senator got me this summer job.

[1:47:00] So, I know how the toll road machines operate. So, let's put CIA officers in the toll booths and then when he comes through the booth, we grab him. &gt;&gt; The idea? &gt;&gt; They said, "That's a terrible idea. We don't even know what he looks like. We have a hundred different versions of what he might look like." I said, "I I don't know what to do to find him." So, you're going after someone that you don't know how they look like. &gt;&gt; No. And we don't know where he is.

[1:47:30] &gt;&gt; Can you imagine? We want you to catch this guy. We don't know where he is. We don't know what he looks like, but catch him like right away. So, I said, "Okay, look. I have a friend at headquarters. He's a terrific targeting analyst and I want to fly him out here." Targeting analyst is different from the analysis that I did. The analysis that I did was, you know, you're reading these reports and reading papers and you write for the president. Targeting analyst focuses only on metadata

[1:48:00] to try to narrow down the location of one person, so he can either be killed or kidnapped. &gt;&gt; Okay? &gt;&gt; So, I called my buddy and I said, "Listen, we're going after a VIP. I can't tell you his name, but I need help and I need for you to come." He said, "Okay, when?" I said like tonight. He said, "Done." Which is the way things are done at the CIA. If you need to go halfway around the world in an hour, you do it. You

[1:48:30] never question it. You just do it. &gt;&gt; He arrived at 4:00 in the morning like we all did. I picked him up and I whispered to him. I said, "The target is Abazuba." He said, "You can't. You You got to be kidding I said, "No, we have we have a bead on him, but we just can't get close enough to grab him." So, I said, "Get a couple of hours sleep. Come to the embassy when you wake up and I'll tell you the whole brief you on the whole case." So, he came to the embassy later in the morning and um I said, "The

[1:49:00] orders are very clear. We have to catch him." We thought he was the number three in al-Qaeda. He wasn't the number three, but he was a bad guy. So he had he had founded both of al-Qaeda's training camps in Kandahar and Helmond provinces. He had founded the House of Martyrs safe house in Pashaw. And if you were tired of the fight and you wanted to go home, he would get you a fake passport and send you home. If you wanted to make jihad,

[1:49:30] he would get you in, smuggle you into Afghanistan, you could make jihad. So he was a bad guy. &gt;&gt; He was a connector. &gt;&gt; Connector. Yes. A facilitator. So he started working. He he had a piece of paper about the size of this table and he wrote Abu Zuba in the middle and circled it. And then around that circle he wrote either the numbers, the email addresses, the names of everybody who

[1:50:00] had been in touch with Abu Zuba. And then around that one he did all the people who had been in touch with the people who had been in touch. And then a third ring. Oh wow. &gt;&gt; To go back one more level. &gt;&gt; Why is that important to go that much back? &gt;&gt; He was trying to draw multiple connections. So if you're in the third one, but you have multiple connections, you are more likely an al-Qaeda figure that we just haven't found out about yet. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; So at the end of the week, it was actually very pretty to look at, like an

[1:50:30] artwork. It looked like a spiderweb. And then he said to me, "I can't narrow it down to any less than 14 sites." I said, '14 sites? We've never done more than two in a single night. He said, "I His security is so good." He said, "I just can't I can't get it down any any fewer." So, I went to the chief and I said I said, "We can't get it down to any fewer than 14 sites." He said, "Well, what do you want to do?" I said,"I got to bring a big team in here

[1:51:00] from Washington, but we're going to need a lot of stuff. We're going to need crates of weapons and ammunition. We're going to need millions of dollars in cash. We're going to need all kinds of stuff." And he said, "Do it." &gt;&gt; Money was not an issue. &gt;&gt; Money was literally not an object. So, I sent a cable to headquarters and I asked for the moon and the stars. They gave it to you &gt;&gt; immediately. I'm telling you, not even

[1:51:30] 48 hours later, a plane landed at the airport full [snorts] of my stuff plus 36 people, half CIA, half FBI. &gt;&gt; Why would FBI be in a in Pakistan? &gt;&gt; Because this was an open criminal investigation. 9/11 was still an open &gt;&gt; So they so they can go outside of the US to grab someone whoever they want. &gt;&gt; Yes. Exactly. To grab them and take them back for prosecution, which in the end never happened. they were all taken to Guantanamo or first they were taken to secret prisons and tortured and then

[1:52:00] Guantanamo. We can get into that later but um I had to do a couple things immediately. I went to ISI and they said what do you need? And I said right now I need a real estate agent. He said okay. They connected me with a real estate agent. I bought two houses to use as safe houses. One was a 10-bedroom, 10b mansion in Lahore because we thought, well, we're going to need to interrogate prisoners. So, we'll use these bedrooms as little

[1:52:30] interrogation rooms. And then a sevenbedroom, seven bathroom house in Fiselabad. So, in the end, we decided to take a look in advance at all 14 sites. We wanted to make sure we weren't being set up, that we're not going to drive into an ambush, &gt;&gt; that we could get out if things go bad. &gt;&gt; The very first place we looked at, it turned out that there were three sites

[1:53:00] in Lahore and 11 in Felabad. The very first place we went to, it turned out to be a pay phone at a Shishkab stand in Lahore. So, you can't you can't raid a closed shish kebab stand at two o'clock in the morning. And it was because clearly there were al-Qaeda living in the neighborhood and they're using that pay phone. &gt;&gt; Yeah. They just they just connect the wires of the pay phone and &gt;&gt; that's it. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; So, we we cut that one off the list.

[1:53:30] That left us 13. So, one of the houses in Lahore was just a house and the other one was a girl school, which turned out to be uh a mistake. It turned out that that girl school was owned by an old man and his three sons. It was um it was the only house in the neighborhood that had a phone and people would go give 10 rupees and they can make their call. &gt;&gt; So, now we're left with 12. &gt;&gt; Now, we're left with uh we didn't know

[1:54:00] that. We didn't know that that was the what was happening. So we hit all 13. But we then got in the car and went to Fiselabad. And almost all of the targets in Fiselabad were just one or two room little huts made out of concrete block with tin roofs, very very poor. So we're driving from one to the other to the other to the other and the analyst calls me from Islamabad. I'm in the car with two Pakistanis and um one

[1:54:30] of my colleagues from CIA and he said, "We just got a call from a friendly Western intelligence service and they have a walk-in." A walk-in is someone who literally walks into an embassy and says, "I have intelligence and I want to give it to a CIA officer or &gt;&gt; literally every single day." Literally. &gt;&gt; Oh, wow. 95% of the time they're crazy people,

[1:55:00] but the other 5%, you know, some of them are probes where the Iranians, the Chinese will send somebody in to look around and see where are the cameras, where's the bulletproof glass, do you have a gun, can I see your badge, are you wearing a disguise? so that if they decide to attack the embassy um they know where the weak points are. &gt;&gt; Okay, &gt;&gt; that happens all the time, too. Um some

[1:55:30] of them are what are called um intelligence peddlers. Maybe you're you're a dishwasher in a restaurant and you hear somebody talking about al-Qaeda. Oh, I just got off the phone with Bin Laden. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; You come in and it's it's real intelligence. Yeah. &gt;&gt; So, you tell me. I say, "Thank you. I give you $500, but then you go to the British embassy and you sell it to MI6. And then you go to the French embassy and give it to DGSSE. And then you go to the Israelis and you go to the Turks and you go to the Russians and

[1:56:00] &gt;&gt; Oh, you made a year's worth of of money in three days. &gt;&gt; Yeah. [laughter] &gt;&gt; It's a good money. &gt;&gt; Yeah, it's good money. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; The remaining 1% is the real deal. &gt;&gt; Yeah. The real deal. People, especially people who used to work on Soviet operations in the old days, will tell you that the best sources they ever recruited in their careers were walk-ins because I'm never going to meet a

[1:56:30] four-star general in the nuclear, you know, whatever. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; So, anyway, I said, "I want to talk to the walk-in." He said, "Can't do it. I already asked. They said the walk-in's not available and uh and we can't talk to them." And I said, "There is no walk-in. They don't want us to know that they have an intercept." &gt;&gt; Why? &gt;&gt; I think they were just trying to protect the source. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; We don't We normally don't share everything with everybody.

[1:57:00] &gt;&gt; Just give them the conclusion. &gt;&gt; Just give them the conclusion. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; I said, "That's okay." So he said, "The information is that there is a huge group of al-Qaeda fighters and they're in a giant yellow house." I said, "That's it?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay." He he called me just as I was entering the University of Fisalabad. We came out on the back end of the university and there on the right

[1:57:30] on seat se uh site 12 is a giant yellow house. &gt;&gt; Lo and behold &gt;&gt; and I said that's it. &gt;&gt; That's the house. And this major this major khaled that I was working with he said I can tell you right now something bad is happening in there. I said how do you figure? He said, "It has to be 105 degrees Fahrenheit." What is that? 40 41 degrees C. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; He said, "All the shutters are closed.

[1:58:00] It has to be broiling hot [snorts] in there, but they want people to think that the house is closed up." &gt;&gt; I said, "Well, we have to put a giant team on that one." And then we start driving to the final site, site 13. And the analyst calls back and he says, 'Are you sitting down? I said, 'I'm in the car. What do you have? He said, Abu Zuba just made a terrible mistake. I said, what is it? He

[1:58:30] said, he accessed his email account with a landline. &gt;&gt; Oh wow. &gt;&gt; And I said, "Oh my god." I said, "Tell me that you have an address for the landline." He said, "It's site 13." So, we drive over there and it's an empty field. Not only was there no house there, there had never been a house there. And I said to Major Khaled, I said, "This isn't possible. We're sure that the call came from this location." And he laughed and

[1:59:00] he said, "No, no, this happens all the time." &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; I said, "Okay, explain." So he says when a plot of land is legally divided for development in Pakistan, it's assigned a telephone number and the number is activated on the telephone pole. So poor people will climb the telephone pole. They'll find the wire that goes to the empty field.

[1:59:30] They'll cut the wire, put their own wire, and then run the line to their own house. So when they make a call, the bill goes to the owner of the property. &gt;&gt; Wow. &gt;&gt; So he calls this young technical officer. He climbs the telephone pole, goes to the top. I say in my book, it's like a Medusa's head of wires. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; He finds the wire. He follows it like this down the telephone pole, down the alley, and he says, "It's that house

[2:00:00] right there." &gt;&gt; Crazy crazy story. And that was the house. &gt;&gt; That was the house. &gt;&gt; That night at 10:00, I stood on a table in the Lahore safe house. We had 60 people all laid out &gt;&gt; in front of us. &gt;&gt; It was CIA, FBI, ISI, and then ISI brought in this special force, police force called the Punjab Police Force. They were like a SWAT team. Special

[2:00:30] weapons &gt;&gt; like Delta equivalent. &gt;&gt; Like Delta equip equivalent. Yes. Exactly. And funny too, these guys were the only ones who would not wear bulletproof vests. They had black t-shirts with a gun on the front and on the back it said Punjab elite force &gt;&gt; and they refused to wear bulletproof &gt;&gt; refused. &gt;&gt; That's how tough they &gt;&gt; That if Allah wanted them then they were going with Allah. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we're going to have to synchronize our watches like in the movies. And everybody laughed. I said, I'm actually serious. We're going

[2:01:00] to have to synchronize our watches &gt;&gt; by the second. &gt;&gt; Yes. by the second and so we did and then I said here's the plan at 10:30 everybody who's going to Fisabat is gonna get on the bus we had to charter a bus if you can imagine &gt;&gt; the amount of people that are needed &gt;&gt; send everybody on the bus I said at 0130 leave the safe house at 0150 be in the neighborhood of the target 0155 have line of sight to the target 0158

[2:01:30] get out of the car and exactly as the clock strikes to break down the door, separate the women and children from the men and grab all the men. &gt;&gt; So the Pak the the Pakistani forces were in charge of separating the women and the men. &gt;&gt; Correct. &gt;&gt; And then after that the Americans would go in. &gt;&gt; Yes, &gt;&gt; that was the plan. &gt;&gt; The Pakistanis were the first in. &gt;&gt; You know, it was funny too. It's their country.

[2:02:00] They were like, "We demand to be the first in." I said, "Fine." Yeah. Yeah. Go be the first in. I don't care. &gt;&gt; They're going to take the risk. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Right. &gt;&gt; Your choice. [snorts] &gt;&gt; The the big fight was between the CIA and the FBI because we freaking hate each other. Number one. Number two, the FBI goes in and they put little yellow sticky notes on the walls. Wall one, wall two, wall three, wall four. Why?

[2:02:30] &gt;&gt; Because they're collecting evidence, &gt;&gt; okay, &gt;&gt; for this big crime. Then they open all the drawers and they take a picture of everything. Everything. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures of everything. The CIA doesn't care about any of that stuff. They just want to go grab the guy and take him to the jail. That's it. &gt;&gt; Yeah. You know, no. The FBI, they lose their minds like, "Oh, no, no, you can't talk to him. He hasn't been read his rights." What rights?

[2:03:00] So this was a big big fight. I'll give you an example. &gt;&gt; They're not they're not even in the US. They're not US citizens. No, &gt;&gt; they're not in the US. What rights are they obligated to? &gt;&gt; The right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will will be provided uh for you at no cost. Do you understand these rights as I have spoken them to you? because they're going to be trial in the US jurisdiction. &gt;&gt; That was the idea. So,

[2:03:30] I'm on the roof of the Fisabad safe house and I said to my colleague, I said, "Oh, 200, here we go." And as soon as I said it, we could hear this noise in the distance. Boink, boink, like metal against metal. And I said, "That's not good." At 2:00 in the morning, nobody in Pakistan is awake. the whole country is sleeping. It's complete silence at night. So this noise at 2 o'clock in the

[2:04:00] morning, we were near the site 13, the final site. I said, "That's not good." And as soon as I said that, we hear shots fired. I said, "Oh my god, that's really not good." So I got on the walkie-talkie. I said, "Sight 13, come in. Site 13, what's going on over there?" Rule Rule number one of intelligence operations, the batteries never work. I complained later when I went back to headquarters. I went with the deputy director of the CIA to NSA and they

[2:04:30] wanted to hear about the operation and what they could do to make things better. And I said, "People, we put a man on the moon and you can't make a battery that lives more than 2 hours." Like, seriously. &gt;&gt; So, communication was out &gt;&gt; out &gt;&gt; at the very at the most important &gt;&gt; at the point where I needed it the most. So, I picked up my phone. I called the guy on site 13. I said, "What's going on over there?" He said, "Shots fired. Shots fired." I said, 'I know. I hear the shots. I'm asking you what's going on.

[2:05:00] We jumped in the car. We speed over to site 13. It's a scene of chaos. One guy is clearly and obviously dead laying in the laying in the street. And so, um, I didn't I I wasn't sure what to do to tell you the truth. I'm trying to find the pictures from that night. &gt;&gt; Okay. So,

[2:05:30] &gt;&gt; that that's the one that when we got to the site, it was chaos there. The first thing we saw, there were three men laying in the street. One was clearly dead. He was a bomb maker from Syria. The other one looked like he was almost dead. And then there was a third who was just screaming. This was the one that was almost dead. This was Abu Zuba. &gt;&gt; That's Abu Zuba. &gt;&gt; That's Abu Zuba.

[2:06:00] So I said, "What happened here?" &gt;&gt; Yeah. The last thing I said in the safe house before we kicked off, I said the orders are to take them alive. No shooting. And I was looking at the Pakistanis when I said this. No shooting. Of course, they just opened fire. You you're clearly annoyed with that. &gt;&gt; Very even after all these years, like

[2:06:30] there was just one thing that I was very specific about. Do not shoot him. Shot him three times with an AK-47 in the thigh, the groin, and the stomach. So when I got there, I said, "What happened?" And this Pakistani says, "We got him. We got your man." I said, "Where is he? Right there." I said, "That doesn't look anything like the pictures." I said, "Are you sure it's

[2:07:00] him?" No. I said, "Well, now what do I do?" I called the analyst. I said, ' Listen, the Pakistanis shot three guys. They say one of them is him. I don't know what to do. How do we identify him? He says, "Get me a picture of his of his eye and I'll run a retinal scan." So, I sat or I knelt down above him above him and I said, "Uh, if nothing."

[2:07:30] So, I pull his eyelids back and his eyes were just white. I couldn't see anything. They were rolled back in his head. I said, "Listen, this guy is bleeding to death. I I can't get his eyes." &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; I was going to kill the Pakistanis. I was so mad. So he said, "Get me a picture of his ear." I said, "His ear?" He said, "Yeah, ears are like fingerprints. No two people on earth have the same ears." &gt;&gt; Okay. I didn't know that. &gt;&gt; I didn't know that. So I took a picture

[2:08:00] of his ear. I had to plug it into my phone, the camera, because phones didn't have cameras in those days. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; I sent it to the analyst. He sent it to CIA headquarters. They came back a minute later. They said, "It's him." &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; We pick him up. We throw him in the back of this filthy pickup truck that you see, this filthy Toyota pickup truck. This poor guy was just driving through this the neighborhood when the CIA is doing this operation. We pull the guy out of his truck. We steal the truck. We

[2:08:30] gave him some money later, but we throw Abu Zuba in the back and then we drive to Fisabad Hospital, one of the worst places on earth. &gt;&gt; The windows are open, the doors are open. Dogs and cats are just walking up and down the halls of the hospital. Swarms, clouds of mosquitoes are just drinking people's blood on open wounds. It was frightening. &gt;&gt; It was a local poor hospital. &gt;&gt; Mhm. I'd rather be dead than to have to be treated in a place like that.

[2:09:00] By now it's like 3:20 in the morning and all these Americans come in dressed as Pakistanis with an Arab and I said to the doctor, "You have to save him. My orders were to take him alive." And the doctor's like, I said, "Go take him." So they took him into the emergency room.

[2:09:30] I sat down with one of my colleagues, with two of my colleagues, and with two Pakistanis. Word got around the al-Qaeda community that we had gotten him. &gt;&gt; And so they started driving by the hospital and just opening fire on the hospital. We were diving down to save ourselves. I said to Major Khaled, "If they realize how lightly armed we are, we're dead. Can you get a helicopter in

[2:10:00] here?" And he said, "I think so." So, he makes a call. 20 minutes later, this helicopter lands in the parking lot. I walked into the the operating room like this. I said, "Doc, wrap it up. We have to go." They sew him closed as quickly as they could. We put them on the helicopter and we fly away. And we land oh about 75 or 80 kilometers away uh at a Pakistani military base. It had a hospital. Not even a hospital. It was a

[2:10:30] clinic. &gt;&gt; It it was round with a nurses station in the center and it had eight like bays. Um but they had an operating room. So we landed there. They were waiting for us. They rushed him into the operating room. And as they're getting him prepared, the doctor comes out and he says, "I should tell you, I've never seen injuries this severe where the patient lives." &gt;&gt; So, we're prepared for him to die. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; And I said, "Okay." So, I called the analyst. I said, "Listen, they think

[2:11:00] he's going to die. These these wounds are too severe. That dog on Pakistanis, the way they shot him like they did." It turned out that Abu Zubeda, the Syrian bomb maker, and Abu Zuba's bodyguard, who was also Syria, climbed to the roof of the house when we started to break the door down &gt;&gt; cuz it wasn't really breaking at the beginning, right? So, they &gt;&gt; was reinforced with steel, which is why it was making that sound, that metalon metal sound. So, while we're trying to break the door down, they climbed to the roof and they were jumping to the next door roof to escape.

[2:11:30] And this Pakistani bang bang bang bang bang like that shot them all. &gt;&gt; So two What about the other two? They died. &gt;&gt; The If you could go to the next picture, that's the bodyguard. He lived. &gt;&gt; Oh, he lived. &gt;&gt; And believe it or not, he kept his leg. &gt;&gt; Oh, wow. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; No, the other one. Okay. &gt;&gt; The the the leg that you see there, he's dead. &gt;&gt; Okay. That's that's

[2:12:00] &gt;&gt; the guy on the left lived. The guy on the right died. &gt;&gt; He kept his leg because he's wounded in his leg. &gt;&gt; He's wounded right through the center of his of his leg. Upper leg. &gt;&gt; They're all very young. They're young boys, huh? &gt;&gt; They're all young. All in their 20s. Yeah. They were all young. Can you go to the next picture? &gt;&gt; That's the bomb maker. &gt;&gt; Uh that's the Syrian guy. &gt;&gt; The Syrian guy. &gt;&gt; He's dead. &gt;&gt; He was dead before he hit the ground. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; The Pakistani killed him instantly. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; We found Was there evidence or stuff? Other are the other photos or no? Oh,

[2:12:30] there's a lot. &gt;&gt; What? Okay, &gt;&gt; this was I was on the phone. This is right after the Abu Zabeta operation. I was on the phone with my girlfriend and we heard this like that. She said, "What was that?" I said, "I don't know. It sounded like an explosion." And then we heard and she said, "Oh my god." I said, "I have to go." And I hung up. Then the embassy uh sirens went on. Take cover. Take cover. Take cover. What that means is all the State Department people take cover. All the CIA people grab their

[2:13:00] guns and run outside to see what the problem is. So we ran outside with our guns. The American embassy was right next door to a church, a multi-denominational church open to everybody. Three al-Qaeda terrorists went inside the church during a church service. Two of them started throwing hand grenades into the &gt;&gt; the the people. One of them just opened fire. They killed seven. They wounded 27, but they killed several of our

[2:13:30] colleagues. And it's funny, you know, that morning I got to the office and one of the old men said, "Hey, you want to go to church?" And I said, "You know, I'd love to, but I have so much work today. I I just can't. I'll go with you next week." So, he went to church, they attacked the church, and they killed him. &gt;&gt; Oh. &gt;&gt; So, if you can go to the next one, it was a scene of chaos. No, that's that we'll come back. These don't seem to be in any kind of weird order. I don't know why.

[2:14:00] &gt;&gt; No, let's go to on the left. Just put a mouse on the left. &gt;&gt; Yeah, they didn't arrive in order. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Go keep going down. &gt;&gt; Keep going down. &gt;&gt; Okay. Go to &gt;&gt; which number? &gt;&gt; Uh go to number eight. And And the church was in chaos. What a grenade can do. It's It's incredible the damage something so small can do. Go to the next one.

[2:14:30] &gt;&gt; As you can see, it was just chaos. And you see the walls are speckled with blood and with brain matter. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; These are FBI colleagues of mine. &gt;&gt; Yeah. Oh, wow. &gt;&gt; Go to the next one. Oh, &gt;&gt; the last &gt;&gt; terrorist saved a grenade for himself and when he ran out of ammunition and ran out of

[2:15:00] grenades, he pulled the pin and he put it against his neck. You can see the chaos that it caused and there's blood everywhere. &gt;&gt; Crazy people, huh? &gt;&gt; Go to the next one. &gt;&gt; That's my goodness. &gt;&gt; That's his brain on the ceiling. &gt;&gt; He didn't want to feel pain. No. And I'm sure he didn't. He didn't live long enough to feel pain. &gt;&gt; Oh my goodness. &gt;&gt; We tried to piece him together. &gt;&gt; That one. &gt;&gt; That one.

[2:15:30] &gt;&gt; We tried to &gt;&gt; You don't You don't have to look at it. Man, press on it. Okay. Yeah. &gt;&gt; We tried to piece him together, but we didn't have very much luck. &gt;&gt; Oh my goodness, man. You &gt;&gt; You were You were exposed to those scenes first time, huh? How were you able to deal with the trauma of seeing all of these things? &gt;&gt; You know, it's funny there's a large psychology staff &gt;&gt; at the CIA. [clears throat] You have to constantly go through psychological evaluation and um I got back after this and I had

[2:16:00] to go, you know, see the psychologist like everybody does. And I went through these tests and they interviewed me over several of the course of several days and the psychologist said, "I find it incredible that you don't have PTSD from Pakistan." And I said, you know, I don't know why I don't have PTSD. I think I was so busy and I felt so strongly about the goals

[2:16:30] of the operation that I just didn't like in my mind I convinced myself that bad things happened to other people and I was going to be fine. And she said, "But you have crippling PTSD from your divorce." &gt;&gt; And I said, "You know what? I'll let you guys figure that out. Yeah. &gt;&gt; So it was it was an ugly day. &gt;&gt; So back to the story of he went but they

[2:17:00] took him to this military clinic. &gt;&gt; So he he went through surgery and then the analyst called me back and he said that the director of the CIA George Tennant had just called and wanted the analyst to relay a message to me and the message was 247 CIA eyes on do not leave his bedside. I said, "I've been I've been sitting here. I mean, not sitting here. I've been I've been awake for 24 hours. I'm I'm tired."

[2:17:30] And he said, "You can't leave his bed." I said, "Okay." So, they brought him out of surgery. He was in a coma. And I thought, "Maybe he's gonna I'm gonna fall asleep and he's gonna get up and run away. I don't know. Maybe the doctor is al-Qaeda." So, I tore up a sheet and I tied his wrists and his ankles to the bed. And then I put the ceiling fan on high to make it just a little bit too cold.

[2:18:00] &gt;&gt; So, he can't sleep. &gt;&gt; So, I couldn't sleep. So, &gt;&gt; I sat at the foot of his bed in a chair like this and I just stared at him. He was bleeding so profusely that the blood soaked through the sheets of the bed and was in a pool on the floor like it was like a scene from a horror movie. At the end of it we we were all covered in his blood. &gt;&gt; So

[2:18:30] finally I called a colleague of mine at the safe house. I said I said buddy do me a favor. I said I smell so bad that I'm grossing myself out. I have clean underwear, socks, and shirt at the safe house. Can you bring them to me? And I'm starving. Bring me something to eat. So, an hour later, he comes. I had only a red t-shirt that was clean with Spongebob Squarepants on the front. My sons had given it to me for

[2:19:00] Christmas, and I sleep in it. Okay. &gt;&gt; I still have it. &gt;&gt; So, I got changed. I'm still wearing my Shelwar Kamsey pants. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And I have the Spongebob t-shirt and new underwear and socks. Thank god they were clean. So I sat back down at the bed and I'm just staring at him. And finally he starts like this like he's starting to wake up. So, I stood up next to the bed and I put

[2:19:30] my hands on my hips and I'm staring at him. And then he opens one eye and you could see the exact moment when he said, "Oh my god, the Americans have me." Because he looked at Spongebob. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; And his heart rate, it went from 110 to 220. And the machine started going beep. And then I hear this announcement. &gt;&gt; Code blue. Code blue, bay three, code

[2:20:00] blue. And then they rush in and they have the paddles and they say clear. Choo choo. Like that. And then they give him a shot of demoral and he's out. &gt;&gt; Sleep. Yeah. &gt;&gt; He was so upset it almost killed him. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And so he slept for another I don't know six hours and then he finally woke up and he's laying there tied to the bed and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and then he goes like this for me to come next to him.

[2:20:30] So I moved his oxygen mask over to the side and I said and he goes like this. So I said again and then he says I will not speak to you in God's language. &gt;&gt; Oh we spoke to you in English &gt;&gt; and I said that's okay Abu Zuba we know who you are and then he started crying and he said please brother kill me take the pillow and kill me. And I said oh

[2:21:00] nobody's going to kill you. We've been looking for you for a long time. He said what's going to happen to me? And I said, "Honestly, I don't know. I will tell you that you are going to get the best medical care that the American government can provide." And he did. But I said, "I'm also going to tell you something else. I am the nicest man that you're going to meet in this experience. My colleagues are not nice like I am.

[2:21:30] So, if there's one thing that you do, you have to cooperate. and he said, "You seem like a nice man, but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate." I said, "Suit yourself." So, I sat back down again. As he got stronger, I should say I was I was physically with him alone in the room for 56 hours.

[2:22:00] &gt;&gt; As he got a little bit stronger, he wanted to talk. He cried a lot. He said he would never know the touch of a woman. He would never know the joy of fatherhood. I said, "You're not the victim here. There were 50,000 people in those towers. Did you think we weren't going to look for you? Look for Bin Laden, try to kill him. What did you think was going to happen?" And he said, "I didn't want to attack the United States." He wanted to attack Israel, but he said, "There were others who were more important than me."

[2:22:30] I said, "Well, I'm going to tell you again. Your life is over. What remains of it can be easy or it can be terrible. Make it easy. You have to cooperate. One of the things that we took that night that we got him was his diary. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; It was sitting on a table next to his bed. So, while he was unconscious, I started leafing through it and I realized immediately this is really

[2:23:00] important. Why wasn't it with FBI? &gt;&gt; It ended up being with the FBI. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; This was the cause of a major split between the CIA and the FBI. The FBI said, "We want that thing." I said, "Fine, take it. I already read it." It was more than a diary, though. Yeah, it was a diary in part, but he was

[2:23:30] writing poetry. He was a very accomplished artist. Like I would pay money in an art gallery for what he was drawing. Most interestingly though, he was writing letters to himself as a young man. So here's the 30-year-old Abu Zuba. He's writing a letter to the 14-year-old Abu Zuba. and he's saying, "Treat our mother with respect. You were

[2:24:00] disrespectful when you did this." &gt;&gt; Or, "Don't whistle at the girls in the neighborhood. That was very rude and it was unkind." You know, things like that. Pay attention in school. Don't uh play around and uh you know, make trouble in school. Pay attention and learn what you're supposed to learn. &gt;&gt; Why do you think he was writing on those? &gt;&gt; I think he was deeply insightful. I think he was very very intelligent and talented and I think that like many

[2:24:30] intelligent people they constantly reflect on their own lives &gt;&gt; just to make them to make to make themselves better. &gt;&gt; Exactly. Plus he had nobody to talk to. &gt;&gt; He's going to tell Khalik Muhammad that oh I whistled at this girl when I was 14 now I feel guilty. He's going to smack him in the head and say get with the program. We have work to do. Yeah. &gt;&gt; So, I got a call from the analyst. He said, "Listen, a plane's going to arrive tonight at 3:00 in the morning, and

[2:25:00] you're going to put him on the plane." I said, "Okay." So, I said, "Uh, Zayn," I said, "Listen." His name was Zay Albadin Muhammad Hussein. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; I said, "Zay, listen. The plane is going to come and it's going to take you." And he said, "Where am I going?" I said, "I have no idea, but I'm going to tell you again. You have to cooperate. You have to. So the plane landed. We could hear it land. It landed right there next to the

[2:25:30] room. And um he started crying again. And uh it came time for us to take him out. So three FBI agents and I picked up his gurnie. It was like from the 50s. It was made out of steel. It was really heavy. So we picked him up. were covered in his blood. He's just as as quickly as they could pump blood into him, it was just leaking out of him. And it wasn't just a drip with the blood. It was actually a

[2:26:00] pump. &gt;&gt; Oh, wow. &gt;&gt; So, it's forcing the blood into him because he was losing it so quickly. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; So, it's just everywhere. And um we had to he was strapped down and we had to lift the gurnie up so it's in a standing position. so we could maneuver him onto the plane. We took him to the back of the plane and laid him across the luggage rack. &gt;&gt; And there was the best doctor there. What he &gt;&gt; he was from He was the head of trauma at

[2:26:30] John's Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the top trauma hospitals in the world. &gt;&gt; They say they made they wanted to make sure that he recovers and survives. Huh. &gt;&gt; Yes. He had to survive. &gt;&gt; So he flew They flew him in. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; And that's where you that's where you took him. handed him over &gt;&gt; and that's the last time you saw. &gt;&gt; Yeah, we strapped him to the luggage rack and I leaned over. He was squeezing my hand and I said, "Good luck. Remember, you have to cooperate." And that was the last time I saw him. &gt;&gt; Why were you very adamant for him to

[2:27:00] cooperate? &gt;&gt; Because I I had a feeling. I didn't really know what was going to happen, but I I know how these guys are, &gt;&gt; my colleagues. A lot of them were monsters. A lot of them a lot of them enjoyed that part of the job. You know, I actively avoided that part of the job. But I knew like when I said to him that I'm the nicest guy you're going to meet, I was being honest. He was not going to have an easy time of it

[2:27:30] &gt;&gt; if he was going to, &gt;&gt; you know, stand up to them. &gt;&gt; So they took him to Guantanamo or they took him to a a black site before Guantanamo. When he asked me where he was going and I said, "I I don't know." That was the honest to God's truth. I had no idea. They took him to a black site. &gt;&gt; A black site is basically for for listeners context is a prison. &gt;&gt; It's a secret prison. &gt;&gt; Usually they're just one or two rooms and they're in isolated countries. In many cases, the leaders of those

[2:28:00] countries, the the presidents, the prime ministers had no idea that there was a CIA black site in their in their country. These were handshake deals between the CIA director and the intelligence director of those countries. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; I am not allowed to say where the locations of the black sites were. What I am allowed to say is that the press has reported extensively on the locations of the black sites. So Google it.

[2:28:30] Um they flew him to the black site. He recovered over the course of six weeks and then in six weeks he began to be interrogated by the FBI. An FBI agent named uh Ali Sufan &gt;&gt; Arab. &gt;&gt; Uhhuh. Uh originally Egyptian born in Egypt, raised in Egypt, naturalized American became a terrific FBI agent. So Ali Ali is very was very very good at

[2:29:00] interrogations. The whole FBI is very good at interrogations. I hate complimenting the FBI. I really do. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; I don't like them. &gt;&gt; I don't &gt;&gt; And they don't like me &gt;&gt; with with your story as &gt;&gt; well. &gt;&gt; Yeah. No, they're they're monsters, most of them. &gt;&gt; But if there's one thing they're really good at, it's interrogations. And they're good at it because they've been doing it since 1945. And &gt;&gt; so, a lot of experience with them. And the way they do it is they treat you with respect and you just have a conversation and they offer you a cup of

[2:29:30] tea or coffee or an orange or if you're cooperative a piece of paper and a pen you can write to your family or you know whatever. And so it took a while, but Abu Zubeda really began to open up &gt;&gt; and he and Ali would have these like real conversations. Abu Zuba gave us actionable intelligence that saved American lives. He told us a

[2:30:00] couple things very specifically. One was we had no idea what the al-Qaeda wiring diagram looked like. We knew it was Bin Laden and then Vaheri and then the number three had been Muhammad Ataf, &gt;&gt; but we killed him in Tora Bora &gt;&gt; and then that was it. That's all we knew. We didn't we knew that there were these cells spread around all over the world. &gt;&gt; We didn't know are they in touch with

[2:30:30] each other? Is there's one supercell that's in charge of the other cells? We had no idea. And so Abu Zubeda showed us on a paper how they're all arranged. &gt;&gt; Al-Qaeda's leadership was very very smart in the way they set the organization up. And that was so no cell had any contact with any other cell. Everything went through. &gt;&gt; Okay? &gt;&gt; Or the next person down who we learned

[2:31:00] was named Mkhtar. I'll get to that in a minute. So Ali said as an example if you wanted to do an attack in let's say Dusseldorf how would you do that and he said oh well I know this guy Muhammad and Muhammad here's his phone number and he has a friend Abdullah and Abdullah has access to weapons but Abdullah's cousin Rashid has explosives

[2:31:30] and here's his email and here's his address and here's his phone number. So we call the Germans and we say, "Listen, you have a serious problem in Dusseldorf and here's the information." And so they break down the door and they grab Muhammad Abdullah and Rashid and that's it. It's done. &gt;&gt; So he starts giving you all these information from everywhere. &gt;&gt; And then he told us about this guy Mkhtar. So we knew that there was this very bad man out there somewhere who went by the

[2:32:00] name Mkhtar. Mhtar was implicated in something called the Bjinka operation in Manila in 1996. So the Bjinka operation was a plan to hijack 14 Boeing 747s &gt;&gt; all at once &gt;&gt; from Manila airport and to fly them into buildings all up and down the west coast of the United States. &gt;&gt; Okay. One day, Mkhtar has this whole

[2:32:30] thing laid out on a table and he decides to go out for lunch. So, he leaves. The cleaning lady happens to come in to clean the apartment. She sees all this. She says, "This looks like a terrorist attack. I better call the police." &gt;&gt; Oh, wow. &gt;&gt; So, she calls the Manila police. They come in. They say, "This looks like a terrorist attack. We better call the Philippine Intelligence Service." They come in and they said, "Oh, this is a

[2:33:00] terrorist attack. We better call the CIA." By then, Mkhtar had run. So, we knew there was this guy. We knew that he was the mastermind of the Bojinka operation. We knew that he intended to use airplanes as missiles. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; But we didn't know who he was or where he was. Abu Zuba laughed and he said, "You don't know who Mkhtar is?" And Ali said, "No."

[2:33:30] And Abu Za said, "His name is Khaled Sheh Muhammad." We had never heard that name before. &gt;&gt; Oh, that was the first time. &gt;&gt; Mhm. So, he could have been in the US and nobody would would have known. &gt;&gt; He actually was in the US. He went to college at the university or uh North Carolina State University and he lived with an American family while he was in college and then just decided at the end of his time in the US he hated Americans and wanted to destroy the country. We had nothing in the files

[2:34:00] of anybody named Khalik Muhammad. So we attached the Mktar files to him and then we started the hunt. It took us another whatever it was year and and two months. &gt;&gt; So you caught him or you killed him? &gt;&gt; We caught him. We caught him in a safe house in Rahul Pindi and uh &gt;&gt; where is that? &gt;&gt; Uh it's a large city that's attached to Islamabad. &gt;&gt; Oh Pakistan.

[2:34:30] &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Um you know he spoke about he's the guy. Huh? &gt;&gt; That's him. &gt;&gt; My good. So he's the guy who articulated 911. He was the mastermind of 911. &gt;&gt; This guy. &gt;&gt; Yes. &gt;&gt; Huh? Born in Kuwait. &gt;&gt; Born in Kuwait. &gt;&gt; Pakistani. Born in Kuwait. &gt;&gt; Yep. &gt;&gt; Wow. So, a lot of talent come comes from Kuwait. [laughter] &gt;&gt; Yeah. And the food's not bad either. &gt;&gt; Not bad at all. Um, so but but we were

[2:35:00] speaking when um during when when we were having coffee before we recorded and he said the way was killed um they shot a drone missile into him that didn't have a &gt;&gt; no warhead. &gt;&gt; No warhead. So it didn't blow anything around him. &gt;&gt; Correct. &gt;&gt; It just gone &gt;&gt; right through &gt;&gt; right through him. &gt;&gt; Right through him. &gt;&gt; And 111 was that? &gt;&gt; Oh 2 3 years ago. &gt;&gt; Oh really? &gt;&gt; Oh it's recent. See now recently.

[2:35:30] &gt;&gt; Isn't that interesting? &gt;&gt; Like people have forgotten about him. &gt;&gt; Yeah. I thought it was done way &gt;&gt; Did you mind googling that? &gt;&gt; 22 almost four years ago. Yeah. It's almost like was &gt;&gt; Oh, so he to get away almost, huh? &gt;&gt; Yeah. Yeah. They found him living in an apartment in Kbble. He would come out onto the balcony uh for fresh air and we decided to

[2:36:00] shoot him with a missile uh but with no warhead on it so that nobody in the apartment would be injured. Now the Israelis would blow up the entire city block and take out every apartment building. But we were very specific about that and &gt;&gt; that's that's what I was going to get to like the you can do that. You can kill specific people and go after specific people. &gt;&gt; You don't have to kill the whole children in the neighborhood &gt;&gt; to send another another message that you clearly want to send.

[2:36:30] &gt;&gt; Even with Bin Laden, when we killed Bin Laden, he was in his house with all of his wives and a bunch of his children and uh two of his bodyguards were shot. I don't remember if anybody was killed, but uh he's like shielding himself with one of the women. He was the only one that that was killed. You You don't have to just kill everybody that's out there to achieve your goal. &gt;&gt; Be a little patient. &gt;&gt; But why was his body thrown in the in the ocean?

[2:37:00] &gt;&gt; We didn't want it to become a sight of veneration. We didn't want to make him like a saint or a martyr of some sort where people would go to his grave and, you know, make him something that he wasn't. &gt;&gt; Make him an icon. &gt;&gt; Mhm. It was better to just throw him overboard. So to wrap up our uh conversation today um why was there a patch on &gt;&gt; that's a good that's a good question you know recently because we want to speak about the torture &gt;&gt; but why or

[2:37:30] obviously you've seen the patch but that's for the watcher and the listener there there's a patch when when you Google Abu Zuba now &gt;&gt; uh there is a patch on his eye &gt;&gt; yes &gt;&gt; like the pirate a pirates's patch &gt;&gt; was that there when when when was that developed? &gt;&gt; Yeah, &gt;&gt; honestly I have to rearch I I was supposed to research this before I I speak to you but I didn't have time to research. So whatever you're going to say now &gt;&gt; that's a very important question. You

[2:38:00] see the passport photo on the bottom left which is the one that I was using. &gt;&gt; Yeah. He um he sees just fine. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Right. When I saw him in the hospital and he opened his eyes, one of his eyes was very, very pale blue. He was clearly blind in the eye. So I said, uh, I said, "What happened to his eye?" And it turned out that he had been hit with a piece of shrapnel in uh in Afghanistan

[2:38:30] &gt;&gt; in the '9s. &gt;&gt; So there that wasn't during the raid. &gt;&gt; No, no, no. It was years before. And he had gone blind in that eye. and it turned very pale, very light blue. Well, the reason he wears the patch is because when he was at Guantanamo, without ever saying a word to him, and this is a war crime, the Americans at Guantanamo um gave him a shot and knocked him out

[2:39:00] and then took him into surgery and they took his eye out. You're not allowed to do that. You can't maim someone and take their their eye out whether it's blind or not. &gt;&gt; Oh wow. &gt;&gt; And they gave him a fake eye, a glass eye. He refuses to wear the glass eye. &gt;&gt; So that's why he's wearing the patch. &gt;&gt; So now he has the patch. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; You know the BBC there was something that was uh there was a report

[2:39:30] and they just gave him money. &gt;&gt; Yeah. The Guardian broke the story. He sued the British government. &gt;&gt; Actually, BBC English, &gt;&gt; he sued the American government as well. And in the United States, it's look Britain pays substantial compensation to Saudi born Guantanamoini for life, &gt;&gt; but that's translated from the website. So that's not the actual in in English, but you can see. So &gt;&gt; that that context is important to your

[2:40:00] case and you whistleblowing the whole thing. So, oh, I've been in close touch with his attorneys. I should say that I am on the record. I've said publicly and I've said it to the BBC and to the Guardian. Abu Zuba should be released and he should be paid for what the American government did to him. &gt;&gt; Why Why should he be released if he's in all of that? &gt;&gt; Because he was innocent of what we accused him of doing. &gt;&gt; What did you What were you What did you accuse him of doing as &gt;&gt; We accused him of being one of the masterminds of 9/11. &gt;&gt; And what was he? Uh &gt;&gt; he wasn't he was a peripheral figure. He

[2:40:30] was not the number three in al-Qaeda. And even if he had done things, like I said, he was a bad guy. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; But even if he had done the things that we accuse him of doing, he's been in prison for 24 years. 24 years. And he's never been charged with a crime. &gt;&gt; Oh, still. &gt;&gt; Never. &gt;&gt; So they took him to after the black site, they took him to Guantanamo. That's where he that's where he was tortured, right? &gt;&gt; Yeah. Well, he was tortured at the black sites. So the black sites when he was

[2:41:00] there he was tortured and that's how he gave the information or okay so he wasn't willing to give information then he was tortured and then he gave information. &gt;&gt; No it's the opposite. He gave the information to Ali. The CIA was furious that the FBI was the one getting the information. So the FBI was thrown out of the secret site and the CIA took over and they began torturing him and he immediately went silent. So the interrogation that was given at the

[2:41:30] beginning was the FBI interrogation was did not involve torture. &gt;&gt; No, never. It was just a conversation. &gt;&gt; Okay. And that's how he gave all the information and then when it when and because of the a CIA FBI thing, he had to pay the price for it. But when you were at the CIA and that's just giving context, you were asked if you wanted to be trained for the enhanced interrogation program which and then you referred to one of your uh seniors and he told you not to go there cuz it's a slippery slope and you can be doing something that's illegal. &gt;&gt; That's right. &gt;&gt; Um and that was done in the CIA and

[2:42:00] there was a guide book for it. That was a policy and that was signed off by the by the White House as well. So by the time he CIA got him, they started using those enhanced interrogation techniques on him. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; Uh [clears throat] one of the most let's say the worst ones that you can do is sleep deprivation. Yes. &gt;&gt; Water boarding. And there was one more that was really bad. &gt;&gt; The cold cell. &gt;&gt; The cold cell. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; So they would they would put you in a cold cell. &gt;&gt; Killed people with all three of those

[2:42:30] techniques. &gt;&gt; Oh, no way. &gt;&gt; Water boarding as well. People can die from huh. &gt;&gt; Actually, Abu Zubed's heart stopped during a water boarding session. He he was drowning and his heart stopped beating and they revived him. They brought him back to life just so they could torture him more. It's sick. And And why were they doing that? The CIA since he was speaking without enhanced interrogation techniques. &gt;&gt; This was a a bureaucratic pissing match between the FBI and the CIA. The CIA was furious that the FBI was taking the

[2:43:00] lead. And so, and here's what made it even worse. Alis fun, remember when I said that the CIA and FBI computer systems were not compatible? &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; So the FBI gets thrown out. The CIA takes over. They start waterboarding Obseta immediately on August the 2nd. Kind of a famous date, August the 2nd uh 2002. And um he went silent. He couldn't believe that they were torturing him and

[2:43:30] he went silent. So what they did is they went into the FBI computers. They pulled all of Ali Kufuan's reports out. They retyped them in the CIA computer and they said, "Look what he gave us. Somebody should call Dusseldorf. He gave us all this intelligence. Mhtar. He's Khalik Muhammad. We got all of this today from the waterboarding." That was all a lie. Ali Sufan had collected that over the course of six

[2:44:00] weeks. A very low IQ lie as well. &gt;&gt; A very low IQ lie. But nobody at CI headquarters knew it was a lie. Because the computer systems were not compatible. &gt;&gt; Okay. &gt;&gt; So he was tortured and then why is he getting paid for it now? Because he was illegally tor tortured or &gt;&gt; he he's being paid for it. Well, first of all, he his attorneys filed a lawsuit against the US government as well, and it's been thrown out twice because literally all the CIA has to do is when

[2:44:30] they go into court, they say, "Your honor, we would love to defend ourselves, but we can't. National security." &gt;&gt; Okay? So, they can pull that card &gt;&gt; and they say, "Case dismissed." &gt;&gt; National security. &gt;&gt; National security. It's different in the UK. M &gt;&gt; and so there were many times during the course of his his uh movement from one secret uh uh prison to another during the course of his torture that the British helped the CIA and so he did the next best thing and he

[2:45:00] sued the British and they were found guilty and they had to pay. &gt;&gt; So with the with the torture program um the enhanced interrogation technique which is a torture program Um just for the listeners context and they can go and and look for many other podcasts which you speak about this in full detail. &gt;&gt; You went out in 2007 on a show in ABC News &gt;&gt; and you blew the whistle. &gt;&gt; I did. Um, and you said that this is

[2:45:30] happening. And then when they asked you what would did you do the interrogations, you said no. And when they asked you why and you gave the best answer I could have thought about while I was watching it, you said because you you didn't like it and they said why do you disagree with it? Something along those lines. And then you turned around and you said because we're Americans and we're better than that. And I think you gave the perfect answer. I think that answer made them very angry because &gt;&gt; it made them very very angry.

[2:46:00] &gt;&gt; Yeah. Because that was the the answer that you given was a very strong answer because once you start torturing someone, they're going to admit to stuff that they haven't done. &gt;&gt; Exactly. &gt;&gt; And and you wouldn't know because And that's the thing that people fear the most is being tortured. Um because they'll just admit to everything and then they just need to face the consequences of admitting to everything that even though they haven't done And we see those we me being from the Middle East I listen to those stories

[2:46:30] from the Assad's regime or the Iraqi regime Saddam's regime and I always thought that the United States are different. &gt;&gt; Mhm. And when us when we found out about what we're going to talk come to to Iraq tomorrow as well when we speak not just about the invasion but we're going to speak about the what happened in 2003 and what was happening in the in the CIA about the weapons of mass destruction. But those little things make [clears throat] us today look at the US with a lot of scrutiny

[2:47:00] &gt;&gt; and not believe that the the things that the US give us face value because they've portrayed themselves as the good guys for a very long time. &gt;&gt; But after 2001, all of these policies were set aside because they wanted short-term wins and now long-term they're paying for all of the the wrong decisions they took. and you're one of the few people who came out very early and said what you're doing is unamerican &gt;&gt; and they didn't like that at the time

[2:47:30] because everyone was very angry with what has happened with with 911 and I congratulate you for being very honorable and um you know having there's a word for it I'm going to search the word now um you stood up for what's right and you stood up for what the American values you grew up around uh really are. And you paid the price. You went to prison for 2 and a half years. &gt;&gt; Mhm. &gt;&gt; Um and and you came out stronger.

[2:48:00] &gt;&gt; I did. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And and and that's very admirable. &gt;&gt; Thank you. &gt;&gt; And that's very inspirational. And that's really why when we learned about your story, we said we need to get this guy into honestly. &gt;&gt; My pleasure. &gt;&gt; The values that you stand for is human values before anything else. And listen, the US isn't an enemy to me and not an enemy to the listeners, but the policies, a lot of the policies are &gt;&gt; wrong, wrong, wrong.

[2:48:30] &gt;&gt; And that's really where where we come in as a podcast. And that's really the bridge that we're trying to build. And we're not here to say, listen, Americans are bad people, cuz I don't think they are. And I think and I told you that before a a lot of American most American people are good people &gt;&gt; but the sometimes people in in power and when we spoke about the Mossad influence and he spoke about the apex influence and he spoke about all of these bad guys' influence they make America look bad in a lot of a lot of times and that doesn't present good Americans like you John and and

[2:49:00] &gt;&gt; I'm going to stop the the conversation here huh no no &gt;&gt; oh no nobility Nobility. There's another word for it as well. &gt;&gt; Spelling. &gt;&gt; Really? &gt;&gt; G E N E R. &gt;&gt; No, it's not generous. Generosity. &gt;&gt; Not generosity. Um. &gt;&gt; Okay. Fine. Well, I I'll give you the Anyway. Um, we're going to continue the convers. Huh? &gt;&gt; Okay. We're going to chivalry. That's

[2:49:30] the word. &gt;&gt; Chivalry. Excuse me. Thank you for that. And I think that's that sets that's what makes humans different than animals. &gt;&gt; Um is they're not driven by fear. They're driven by values and morals. &gt;&gt; So thank you for for accepting the invitation. &gt;&gt; Thank you for &gt;&gt; people can go and people can go and listen to your story. Um you've you've been on Tucker Carlson. You've been on Joe Rogan. You've been on many other podcasts and you have the a book. But have you have you spoken about the story on a in a book or have you not?

[2:50:00] Yeah, I I I touch on it in my first book, which I'm sorry to say is out of print now. Uh but I published another book with one of the Guantanamo guards. We each wrote half called uh The Convenient Terrorist. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; Uh but I'm I'm going to I'm going to do it right in my next book. &gt;&gt; What's the slogan of this book? I remember the slogan. It was a cool, &gt;&gt; you know, at at first it was u Abu Zuba and the weird wonderland of America's secret wars and they changed it to two

[2:50:30] officers stories of CIA lies &gt;&gt; something something. &gt;&gt; No, there was a different book. I thought they were talking about the one that um how you used your CI that was the second one that was doing time like a spy. How the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison. &gt;&gt; Yeah, I think that I think the the title of this book is really good. Thank you. &gt;&gt; And I want to read this book. Uh but it's not relevant for our Middle Eastern listeners right now. But uh I'm going to have a conversation with you at some point about that. Thank you again. We'll

[2:51:00] go to Schum now to eat some &gt;&gt; Thank you. &gt;&gt; rice and uh fish if you like fish. &gt;&gt; Wonderful. &gt;&gt; Uh and yeah, see you tomorrow. &gt;&gt; See you tomorrow. &gt;&gt; All right. &gt;&gt; Thank you. Forgot to thank you. [music] Thank you. &gt;&gt; Shout out to uh NR's brother um [music] Barak for recommending this episode. &gt;&gt; Oh, how nice.
