Title: S1E14 Game On
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-02-09
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69783ecc9bc4db983b369e0c/media.mp3
Duration: 0:30:21

---

[00:00] This podcast, it's a casted in touchstone production. A lot of people at the CIA have very elaborate cubicles. Very few people have private offices. There was this movement in the 80s and 90s to level the playing field and make these big open bull pens where you could put hundreds of cubicles and everybody feels equal. Well, some had very elaborate cubicles and others like me just had sort of the bare necessities. I had my Arabic English English Arabic dictionary.

[00:31] I had a clock, you know, when you needed a clock. Of course, even still today, you can't take a cell phone inside the CIA. It's a security violation. My first boss had a couple of interesting quotes hanging over his desk. There were mostly motivational quotes that really meant nothing to me, but I found a quote very early in my career and I actually researched it to make sure that it wasn't apocryphal because it was so great. I wanted to be able to hang it up and cite it. It turned out to be a true quote and it was by former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

[01:03] He said, the thing about you Americans, you never make clear cut stupid decisions. You only make complicated stupid decisions, which makes us wonder if there is something to them which we are missing. And I found that quote to be the definition of American foreign policy. Our decisions are usually very complicated stupid decisions. And then we like to congratulate ourselves and tell ourselves that we're all geniuses and that's just not the way it is.

[01:39] Hi, I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Rock, What Makes a Spy Tick? This is another episode in our series, What Makes This Spy Tick? Before we get back to it, I wanna thank you as always for listening. Thank you also for all your likes, ratings, reviews, and shares. We are genuinely delighted that more and more listeners like you are taking this storytelling journey with us. I really appreciate it. Very disturbing live shot there. That is the way trade center. We have not confirmed the forces or anything that are pointing at the point

[02:10] that we have encountered terrorism center watching helplessly as some of the very terrorists we were trying to counter attacked America on TV. It was shocking on multiple levels and absurd on others. But America yet again was facing the dire consequence of earlier complicated stupid decisions that we had made. So was the CIA. To fully understand how the CIA responded to that day, how it responded to that day, you have to know what we already knew,

[02:40] how we knew it and why knowing it didn't help us, although it absolutely should have. As I said in an earlier episode, everyone in CTC that day was surprised by what was happening on TV. But we weren't surprised by the terrorist act itself. Rather, we were surprised by its timing. One person who definitely wasn't surprised as he watched in horror was Kofor Black. He was the director of CTC. I told a story about Kofor back in episode 13. I was training a group of Middle Eastern

[03:11] foreign intelligence officers when to my great surprise, Kofor stopped by to ask these officers to help in tracking down a new but very real threat to America's national security. That was a man named Osama bin Laden. Kofor got zero help from those officers that day. And now on September 11th, his worst nightmare was coming true. As the CIA's counterterrorism center gasped on Moss at the TV, a man behind me shouted, well, someone please lead. Slowly all eyes went to Kofor.

[03:42] We needed a genius in that moment and that's the man who stepped forward. Kofor was a long time Africa specialist. He was a member of the senior intelligence service, highly regarded, widely respected. He had been the station chief in Khartoum, who was responsible for the capture of Carlos the Jackal. We've got a whole mini episode planned to tell you the Carlos the Jackal story.

[04:12] Talk about a jaw-dropping story. I still just get chills when I think about it. The point though is Kofor Black was uniquely qualified to lead the CIA's counterterrorism response to the actions of a unique terrorist like Carlos the Jackal or Osama bin Laden. In December 1998, George Tenet, then the CIA's leader under President Bill Clinton, declared war on Osama bin Laden. Tenet tasked CTC with creating a new comprehensive plan of attack, which they did, and then previewed to senior CIA management

[04:45] at the end of July, 1999. By mid-September, just a few months later, the CIA management was briefing operational level personnel at other agencies, not just the CIA, but NSA, the FBI, even the Pentagon on this new plan, which, going right to it, they began calling the plan. So it is a stone cold fact that the CIA literally had a plan to deal with Osama bin Laden. In that plan, the CIA would ring Afghanistan

[05:16] with secure covert bases as many as we could, and then run CIA operations from them. The plan's goal was simple, capture bin Laden and bring him back alive for legal prosecution. To that end, Kofor wanted to create a dedicated bin Laden unit within the agency. Part of the unit would include commandos or power military-style teams made up of officers who could blend into the region's Muslim population. Back in episode one, I told you that spying is above almost everything else, a people business.

[05:47] The more you understand people on a personal level, the easier it is to recruit them to work on your behalf, to spy for you. Understanding other people often demands understanding their culture and their religious faith, the emotional, moral, philosophical glue that holds them all together. To devout Muslims, Saudi Arabia is more than just a country. It's where the Prophet Muhammad was born and where the Quran was revealed to him. And it's where Muhammad died. Two of Islam's holiest places,

[06:19] its holiest mosques are in Saudi Arabia, at Mecca and Medina. That holiness carries a lot of very real moral weight with devout Muslims like Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was quoted on many occasions as saying that America's presence in Saudi Arabia was an affront to both Saudi Arabia and to Islam itself. That is a real and important distinction. Bin Laden used to say that the United States was polluting the land of the two holy mosques.

[06:50] What that means is the king of Saudi Arabia, his official title is king and custodian of the two holy mosques being Mecca and Medina. So there's a religious component to the position of king of Saudi Arabia. And bin Laden and Al Qaeda had been very successful in spreading these rumors all around Saudi Arabia that female soldiers were driving in contravention of Saudi law, that American soldiers were having sex in public.

[07:24] There were rumors that they were having sex in front of the holy Kaaba in Mecca that they were eating pork and they were giving pork to Saudi children. It was nuts and it was laughable if you're an American and you're reading it. But a lot of Saudis believed it and it brought them over to the side of Al Qaeda. Kofir Black didn't just walk on to the job that morning of September 11th. He had been the head of the counterterrorism center for a little more than three years at that point.

[07:54] The plan was to locate bin Laden, other leaders in Al Qaeda, fighters in Al Qaeda, training bases in Al Qaeda, safe houses, whether they were in Afghanistan or in Pakistan and then the other side of it was to fight Al Qaeda wherever we happened to find them. If that meant forcing a plane to land and grabbing somebody off the plane, if that meant snatching somebody off the street in Milan or Berlin or Cairo

[08:26] or wherever they happened to be, the CIA was prepared to do that and that was thanks to Kofir Black. The plan, as I said, was to locate and capture bin Laden as well as any other part of Al Qaeda's leadership. We didn't just want to cut the head off the snake, we wanted to obliterate it as much as we could. We went after Al Qaeda both where they were in Afghanistan and wherever we could find them throughout the world. We went after their safe houses and tried to stop them from communicating with the outside world. Their outlet of choice really was Al Jazeera.

[08:59] Now, Al Jazeera wanted to be helpful to us but they genuinely had no idea how Al Qaeda's audio tapes and video tapes made their way from Al Qaeda to Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha. Ironically, just as the CIA's literal plan began moving forward, so did another plan. This one was being imagined, drawn up and penciled out in Afghanistan. Between November and December of 1999, Muhammad Atta, Marwan Ashahi, Ziyad Zara

[09:31] and Nawaf Al-Hazmi visited Afghanistan where they were all selected for the airplanes operation. The CIA actually watched Al-Hazmi and his companion Khalid Al-Midhar attend an Al Qaeda conference in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in January 2000. That was thanks to the Malaysian security unit. It would turn out that more decisions about the planes operation were being made while we watched. Although we didn't know the details, we knew that something bad was afoot.

[10:02] The problem was what we did and didn't do with that information. Cofer would be criticized later in an internal CIA report about the CIA's performance prior to 9-11 for keeping the FBI in the dark deliberately. In particular, the agency never told the FBI that Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar had been granted visas to enter America. Meanwhile, apprehension flooded the zone at a July 10th, 2001 meeting with National Security Advisor Kondi Rice, among others,

[10:33] Rich B, CIA Director Tenant's assistant, so to speak, predicted not just a spectacular terrorist attack against US interests in the coming weeks or months, but multiple simultaneous attacks. Here's a little more irony. George Tenant said in his book that after the meeting, Rich B and Cofer actually congratulated each other for finally getting the Bush administration to pay attention to this incredibly important matter. But did they?

[11:04] Were they? Still, Cofer pressed on. One of the ways the CIA and CTC knew what we knew was from intel gathered by predator reconnaissance drones. These flights were carried out jointly by the agency and the US Air Force. Cofer got the idea of arming these aircraft with missiles to target Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. On September 4th, 2001, just a week before the attacks, Cofer urged George Tenant in advance of an appearance before Congress to promote the idea of arming these drones

[11:38] and then adding a new capability to attack with them. On September 4th, 2001, Tenant promoted this program to a long-awaited cabinet-level principles committee meeting where he got the authorization to deploy the system with weapons-capable aircraft. A week later, far too soon for any such weapon system to be deployed, America was under attack. And to make matters worse, there was a complete breakdown at the time in cooperation between the CIA and the FBI.

[12:13] That statement deserves a little bit of historical context as well. The CIA and the FBI historically have always hated each other. They hated each other since the CIA was created with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry Truman. Now, when the act was being considered on Capitol Hill, it called for the creation of a central intelligence agency. We didn't have a central intelligence service in the United States. We had the FBI,

[12:44] and the FBI was led by J. Edgar Hoover, who was arguably the most powerful man in government next to the president himself. Hoover began lobbying on Capitol Hill, asking members of Congress, but particularly Republican members of Congress, to oppose passage of the National Security Act. President Truman got wind that he was doing this. And so he called Hoover into the White House and told him that the country really needed a central intelligence agency, but that the CIA would be a division of the FBI.

[13:20] Summertime and the living is easy, am I right, John? That is one of the best parts of Summer Allen. Living really does feel easier. You're about to travel. Good thing you've got a couple of quints pieces going with you. They are as relaxed and comfortable as I wanna feel. That's why, whether I'm traveling or staying at home, I reach for the same quints go anywhere pieces again and again. Quints focuses on well-made essential. They're the t-shirt I reach for first every time. In all seriousness, I just bought another one today. They're my favorite t-shirts too.

[13:51] And when the ocean breeze kicks in at night, as it does here in LA, a quince lightweight cotton sweater is sublime. And perfect for travel too, which these days has all kinds of new challenges that impact how you pack. So versatility really matters. You gotta pack smart like a spy. That's why a pair of quints is 100% European linen pants and a couple of linen shirts are coming with me. They're breathable and easy to throw on. Sometimes I add a t-shirt underneath for a whole other look. They're the summer upgrade anyone's rotation needs.

[14:24] Starting at just $34. That's not a typo. No, it's not. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for exceptional quality, not for brand markup. Ethical factories matter. They matter to me. And quince now has all kinds of other essentials beyond clothing, essentials for travel, home, everyday life. But it all starts with great summertime threads that just feel like they belong on you.

[21:12] We left the building and found a bloodmobile not far from my apartment, but the line was so long that one of the Red Cross volunteers told us it'll be 24 hours before we could even get to you. So I said to her, we gotta go back to headquarters. This is ridiculous. We're not doing anybody any good to hiding, hiding from Al Qaeda. So I walked the three and a half miles back to my car. I got in and drove over the median. I went back to CIA headquarters and I didn't leave for the next four days.

[21:44] Anytime I felt like I needed an hour of sleep, I would just ball up my jacket and sleep under the desk. But we were all working quite literally 24 hours a day. And the funny thing is when we evacuated on the 11th, the company that ran the cafeteria, which happened to be the Marriott, they put a chain in a padlock on the cafeteria doors. You can't order pizzas from Domino's down the street forever. So we managed to gin up a bolt cutter. We cut the padlock off the door.

[22:15] I was one of a half a dozen or so guys who went in there and fired up the grills. We cooked literally everything that the Marriott had. We ended up having to write them a check for $15,000 for all the food that we took. But as we would cook it, we would just lay it out on folding tables in the hallway outside the counter-terrorism center. And people could just graze all day and all night, sleep an hour, get back to work. I didn't leave for the next four days. I went up to a guy who was the deputy director of operations for the counter-terrorism center.

[22:46] And I really liked him. He and I just sort of hit it off when I first arrived. We just enjoyed each other's company. So I knew that he would make five minutes for me where everybody else was too busy. So I went into his office and I said, what can I do to be helpful? I'll do anything, literally anything. Tell me what I can do to be helpful. He said, honestly, what everybody's doing right now is name traces. Well, name traces are like the lowest level work that anybody could do at the CIA. A trained monkey could type a name into the computer and then just cut and paste

[23:18] whatever happens to come back. So I kept checking in with him each day, saying, you know, tell me what to do, tell me what to do, tell me what to do. He reminded me that a psychologist with whom I once did an operation had paid me this incredible compliment. She said, you know, John Kiriakou will come up with 30 different ideas for an operation. 26 of them are nuts, but four of them are gonna be really good. And he said, give me some of those four, come up with something great that we can implement.

[23:48] And so I sat down at my desk and I started thinking about it. And one thing that Kofor had said, subsequent to the attacks, was that our budget is unlimited, our manpower is unlimited, and we are going to go after every terrorist group in the world that means us harm. Well, I was an expert on 17 November, and there was something that I really, really wanted to do. So I went up to Kofor, I approached him in the hall and I said, Kofor, I have an idea for an operation that I wanna pass by you.

[24:19] He put both of his hands up and he said, whatever it is, just do it. I have so much money, I can't possibly spend it all. So I went back to the office and I said, Kofor approved the operation. My boss said seriously? I said, seriously, I just ran into him in the hallway. And he said, just do it. And he said, okay, safe travels. And so I flew out to Europe. I was gone for a couple of weeks. I scared the shit out of a very old communist.

[24:49] I'll say that, but he was no longer associated in any way with 17 November and I flew back. I ended up finding the husband of the woman that we believed was the lookout in the Dick Welch assassination. I found him in the United States. I flew out to Los Angeles, California and cold pitched the guy. He actually ended up being very helpful and gave us information that we otherwise never knew and probably would never have collected, but it didn't help us crack the 17 November case.

[25:21] None of this was aimed at Al-Qaeda. This was old business. And when it came to Al-Qaeda, that was not my area of expertise. The operation was very simply to kill as many of them as we could. And that wasn't my thing. I also decided that I would try to offer up a bit of expertise that was not readily available in the counter-terrorism center. And that was my expertise, not just in the Middle East, but in analysis of the Middle East. I suggested a propaganda program to counter Al-Qaeda.

[25:52] We have to focus also on hearts and minds. What we need is an Imam in the Middle East, preferably somebody from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is the oldest university in the world. That's where all of the greatest thinkers of Islam have studied. We need a Sheikh of Al-Azhar to come out and issue a fatwa permitting a war against Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. And they were like, shit, we never even thought of that. They engaged with the Egyptians. A fatwa was issued in support of the United States.

[26:25] I was kind of proud of that. But I had ants in my pants to get involved on the ground. In the meantime, they're sending more and more people around me, but all people who had military experience. I was very, very well aware that there was an enormous operation taking place in Afghanistan and being planned right there in the same room where I was working and that I was not privy to its details. This is the thing about the CIA. A lot is compartmentalized. If you don't have a need to know, then you don't know.

[26:57] And if you don't have a need to know, you know well enough to not ask. More and more of my colleagues are disappearing by the day. Like, oh, what happened to Jim? Jim went TDY, temporary duty. And you know not to ask where. I really wanted to know what everybody was doing because I wanted to be a part of it. I took 9-11 as seriously as anybody did in America. I lost friends. I lost colleagues that day. And then when Kofor stood on that chair,

[27:27] that morning of 9-11 and said, today we are at war. We're all going to have to fight and not all of us are coming home. I knew that I had to do my part. And it was like they wouldn't let me do my part. So I tried to make myself as useful as I could, either at headquarters or in Europe or in the Middle East until it came my time. I knew that eventually they would need to get to me. And that's what happened. I only learned of my opportunity because I forced it.

[27:57] The deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center was one of my first bosses. He had risen through the ranks on the analytic side. I went into his office and I said, so help me God if you don't send me to Afghanistan right now. I am walking straight to Exxon with my Arabic and I am not looking back. And he said, will you take it easy? I said, I'm tired of this, man. I'm tired of being overlooked. I want to fight. I want to make a contribution. I said, I have Arabic.

[28:28] Almost nobody in this office has Arabic. You've got to send me. He said, all right, all right. You want to go to Pakistan? I said, yes, when? He said, tomorrow. I said, yes. What do you want me to do there? He said, I want you to be chief of counterterrorism operations. And I said, done. And I walked out and I picked up my secure line. I called my girlfriend who was several floors above and I said, I got to go to Pakistan tomorrow. And she said, okay, for how long? I said, I don't know, six months, nine months, 12 months. And she said, okay, I'll meet you at your place and I'll help you pack.

[29:01] In the next episode of Dead Drop, what makes this spy tick? I'll take you to Pakistan, where we go hunting for al-Qaeda. After setting up shop in Islamabad, I finally got my own office, teeny tiny as it was. We'll start by kicking down some doors, taking out a terrorist safe house or two and the terrorists inside them. We'll interrogate a few prisoners. I'll play the good cop if you don't mind and we'll cap it all off by finding ourselves quite suddenly on the trail of al-Qaeda's number three. At least we thought so.

[29:32] A man with a numb daguer, abuz-u-beida. Game on becomes the hunt is on. If you enjoyed this podcast, please check out my other podcasts and YouTube shows. There's Deep Program, Monday through Friday mornings at nine o'clock Eastern on both Rumble and YouTube and Deep Focus on YouTube. We drop those about twice a week. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz.

[30:02] Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a Costart and Touchstone production.
