Title: S1E17 Zain
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-03-02
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/699e511e123f9740820fec2f/media.mp3
Duration: 0:30:12

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[00:00] This podcast is a casted in touchstone production. When we left off, Abu Zubaydah was lying in a hospital bed in a small eight bed emergency hospital that sat quite conveniently opposite the end of a military runway. Pakistani intelligence had helicoptered us all there because Abu Zubaydah's terrorist cohorts had descended upon the first hospital and began spraying it with gunfire. By that point, Zayn was so badly wounded that the young Pakistani doctor tasked with his care

[00:34] took one look at him and told us that we had a better chance of winning a powerball lottery than we did of keeping him alive. Seriously, doc, I said, he's got to live. He's an important guy and we really need to get him the best care we can. I literally had orders to tell any doctor treating Zayn to stabilize him the best they could to stop the bleeding and treat him beyond that only if an emergency popped up. Our goals to get him Western style medical care ASAP and then interrogate the hell out

[01:08] of him. The director's office at headquarters had ordered 247 CIA eyes on. Those were the exact words. As Zayn's handler, that meant that I would not leave his bedside. Screw being tired. I was out of luck. Inside my head, I pushed Wooziness aside. Logistics and strategizing took its place. I quickly prioritized everything I needed to prioritize with a plan A, B, C, and D.

[01:38] When the doctor ducked out for a moment, I grabbed a spare sheet, I tore it into strips and I tied Zayn to the bed. The doctor returned and saw what I was doing. No offense, doc, is what I said. But I don't know you and my orders are that this man cannot leave until we take him out of here. The doctor said to me, he's in no condition to leave. He's in a coma. But I continued tying Zayn to the bed. Just as well I said, I'm going to keep him tied down. The young Pakistani doctor just shook his head knee, left the room.

[02:09] These Americans and their bizarre behavior. I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop. What makes a spy tick? This is another episode in our series. What makes this spy tick? Before we get back to Zayn and the beginning of my relationship with him, I want to talk about our relationship, the one between you and me. That we have one is because you're listening to this story and I'm glad you are.

[02:42] And I'm even gladder that we have a relationship because of it. Thank you. I've said it before on this podcast, but I'll say it again. One of the great things about this medium for storytelling especially is that it really does come down to a one-on-one connection between my voice and your ears. So thank you as always for listening. But I also want to thank you for being proactive about your listening. Each and every like, kind rating, review and share on whatever platform you're listening

[03:14] really does help us grow. It tells more people that this story is worth a listen. So again, thank you. So there I was, sitting at the foot of Zayn's bed. This was a much better hospital than the first one. There was no comparison really between the two, but we're talking about degrees of better. This hospital was definitely less, well, squalid. There weren't the roaming dogs and cats. This place felt like an actual hospital with its eight patient bays arrayed around

[03:48] a central nursing hub. There were a few other patients. But while this hospital was better, it was hardly perfect. An example, in place of air conditioning it had open windows. That brought in aggressive swarms of mosquitoes drawn by the smell of so much blood. And when we brought Zayn in the door he was pumping blood out as quickly as we could pump the blood in. And I mean that literally. Those mosquitoes weren't just drawn to the smell of my blood. They could smell Zayn's blood.

[04:19] And it was on my clothing and it was on my skin. I was like a mosquito smorgasbord. At least swatting these relentless motherfuckers helped keep me awake. And as I've said before, I have a thing about insects that drink my blood. There were ceiling fans in this ward and at one point I turned on every fan just to try and blow the little bastards away from me. Amir was my savior. Amir was my colleague from the CIA who had come from a domestic assignment just to

[04:55] help us catch Abu Zubeda. At one point Amir spelled me for a bit while I crashed in an empty hospital bed. Another time he brought me clean clothes from my room at the safe house and then watched our package while I changed and used the bathroom. The shirt that Amir brought me. It was a Christmas gift from my kids. It was bright red and had a huge picture of SpongeBob Squarepants on the front. It might not have been my choice but that's what I changed into. It was the only clean shirt that I had.

[05:26] And that's what I was wearing when Zayn finally opened his one good eye. We'll get to that. And took in this horrifying figure in his crimson SpongeBob Squarepants shirt. His shower camis pants and the look of absolute resolve on his face. That was me. It wasn't hard to read Zayn's mind. You could tell the exact instant that he realized, oh my God, the Americans have me. His heart rate soared from 120 to 220. The monitors all went off.

[05:58] A doctor and a nurse rushed in and told me to leave. I'm not going anywhere, I told them. More Pakistani head shaking at this bizarre American. A nurse arrived with a crash cart. Zayn was in ventricular fibrillation and they shocked him. Zayn's heart rate slowed and then it steadied finally in the 110 to 120 range. Much better. One of the nurses pumped Demoral into his IV and just like that he was out again. I actually envied him the sleep.

[06:29] For me it was back fighting these mosquitoes and the boredom. At one point I heard the bodyguard crying in another one of the bays. If you remember I was away to try to run, try to jump from the roof of his safe house to the roof of a neighboring house with two compatriots. One was shot to death as he leapt from roof to roof, dead before he hit the ground. The other, a bodyguard from Syria, got shot through the femur. He was still very much alive and he too was a part of our, well, traveling road show.

[07:00] He was in pain, a lot of pain and he was scared out of his mind. I approached his bed. Salamu alaikum, may peace be upon you. He's crying and he says, wu alaikum alaikum. I said, kef halak. It literally means what is your condition. Kef halak, alhamdulillah, glory to God. And I said, alhamdulillah in English. I said, you don't look so good. Are you American? Yes, I'm part of the team that captured you. Sir, please. He said the Pakistanis, they caught me and they held me down on the ground

[07:33] and they put an AK-47 against my leg. And then they shot me. That's not what I heard. I heard you were jumping from the roof of the house to the roof of the next door house to escape. His crying stops immediately and he says, I am 150 kilos. I cannot jump from the roof. 150 kilos is about 330 pounds and he was about 330 pounds. I went up to him. I pulled the bloody sheet back from his leg and there was an absolutely grisly gunshot wound.

[08:06] Right through the center of his leg and a perfect powder burn, the size of a dinner plate, all the way around it. And I thought, those dog on Pakistanis, I specifically said, do not shoot them. It's like the only direct order that I gave. Do not shoot them. And of course, they just opened fire and shot them. I've wondered over the years, did they do that on purpose? Did they want it so that Abuz Abeda couldn't survive and couldn't tell us that he had colluded? Maybe with the Pakistani intelligence service.

[08:38] There was a reason why we never told them that the target was Abuz Abeda. Perhaps this was it. That's a question I think I'll never get an answer to. I walked back over to Abuz Abeda's bay and I sat down. He began to stir again after a while. Finally, he opened his eyes. Now he was blind in one eye. He had had a shrapnel wound to one eye during the war against the Soviets. One eye was a very pale blue. Like you imagine you might see on a blind man. The other eye was a dark, rich chestnut brown.

[09:10] He opens his eyes and he's staring at me. As he's tied, wrists and ankles to the bed. And with his right hand, he motions for me to come next to him. He wants to tell me something. I go up to the bed. I take the oxygen mask off of his mouth and I put it over to the side on his cheek. And I said, Shuhesmek, what is your name? He shakes his head. So I said it again, Shuhesmek. He said to me in English, I will not speak to you in God's language. I said, that's okay Abuz Abeda, we know who you are.

[09:42] I asked our patient, what can we do for you? I want a glass of red wine, he said. That kind of took me by surprise. And I asked, what? The doctor came into Zane's Bay as he repeated, I want a glass of red wine. The doctor said, he's hallucinating. I put Zane's oxygen mask back over his face. That idea of a glass of red sounded excellent to me. And so did the idea of sleep. They gave him another hit of demoral. Zane dozed off and I sat back down on my uncomfortable metal folding chair.

[10:18] Fade to a few hours later as Zane came to and he motioned for me like he had done before. He had something to say. As I went next to him, I could see that he was crying. And he said, please brother kill me, take the pillow and kill me. I said, kill you. He said, yes please brother kill me. Nobody's going to kill you. We've been looking for you for a long time. He starts crying again. What's going to happen to me?

[10:48] Honestly, I don't know. But I can tell you that you are going to receive the best medical care that the American government can provide. And indeed he did. As it turned out, the executive director of the CIA, the third ranking officer in the CIA, Buzzy Kroengard, happened to sit on the board of directors of Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. And so as soon as we reported to headquarters that Abu Zubeda was in our custody but that he had been shot, Buzzy called Johns Hopkins and asked for the

[11:20] top trauma surgeon. They put him on a CIA jet, flew him to Pakistan and he arrived about 12 hours later. I said to Abu Zubeda, I'm going to give you some advice. I am the nicest guy that you're going to meet in this experience. My colleagues, they are not nice like I am. If there's one thing that you do, it's that you have to cooperate. Your life is over. But what's left can be easy or it can be terrible.

[11:50] Take it easy. He said, you seem like a nice man, but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate. I sat back down. He just kind of stared at me for a while. His English was practically native. It's as though he lived in the United States. He studied in the United States. He didn't, of course. He's Palestinian, but he was raised in Saudi Arabia and learned English at school. Later that he loved American movies and American TV shows and that's where he

[12:22] learned to speak English and just picked the language up. His English was terrific. He could go through life just speaking English. He was very good with languages. You know, it turned out that he and I actually had a lot in common and I said to him afterwards, if this were a different life, maybe we would be friends. I'll get to that a little bit later. But in any event, I sat back down at the foot of his bed and we just started talking, just talking like two men. He kept this diary that I mentioned.

[12:54] We had captured the diary when we raided the house. So the diary was next to him on the nightstand. I would pick it up and I'd leaf through it. I'd say, my God, you're a talented artist. You really have a gift for drawing. It's quite incredible. And then he would say, well, I've written some poetry there. You see the poetry and I would read the poetry out loud. It was an Arabic and I'll tell you one thing about the Arabs and the Persians for that matter is that they're very, very proud of their poets through the centuries. Poetry is seen as something that's very honorable in the Middle East.

[13:56] Don't whistle at them. Be nice to your brothers and sisters. They look up to you. Things like that. You could tell that he was writing about regrets that he had in his life. The CIA and the FBI ended up having very deep disagreements about that diary. One FBI psychologist called it the rantings of a crazy person. And I remember saying on the contrary, he's very intelligent and there is nothing crazy about him at all. What you're seeing in that diary is creativity.

[14:26] Maybe it's things that you and I would think that we would never commit to paper. The FBI psychologist who came to that conclusion had never met Abuz-e-Beta. He was just basing it on his own biases, frankly. And what he saw in the diary. Abuz-e-Beta and I talked a lot. We talked about our families. He cried often. He said he would never know the touch of a woman. He would never know the joy of fatherhood. And I got angry actually when he said that.

[14:57] And I said, you're not the victim here. There were 50,000 people in those towers. What did you think would happen? Did you think we wouldn't try to find you and catch you or find bin Laden and kill him? You're not the victim. He said, I never wanted to attack the United States. I wanted to attack Israel. He specifically said all I ever wanted to do was to kill Jews. I sat there talking to him with the complete belief that he was the number three in Al Qaeda, that he was an operational mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

[15:27] And as it turned out, that just simply wasn't true. There were two things that we learned after the fact. We learned that he had a cousin, a first cousin who was also called Abu Zubaydah. And so we would get these intelligence reports. Abu Zubaydah is in Pakistan. He's creating the House of Martyrs safe house for Al Qaeda in Peshawar. Oh my God, Abu Zubaydah is in Amman. He's planning a terrorist attack outside the city. Oh my God, Abu Zubaydah is in Saudi Arabia. He's talking to some terrorist.

[15:58] So I remember specifically saying this Abu Zubaydah, this guy is a terrorist Superman. He's flying all over the region. He's planning these attacks all over the region. I don't even know how we get a hold of somebody like this. Well, it turned out there were two of them. The cousin at the time that we captured our Abu Zubaydah, the cousin was living in Montana. And as soon as the capture hit the papers, he vanished. And we never saw him again. The FBI told me later they believed he was probably somewhere in Jordan.

[16:32] But the Jordanians couldn't find him. If anybody could, it would be the Jordanians and they just couldn't find him. There's a lot of pride at stake here, too. You can't launch the biggest counterterrorism operation in the history of the CIA. Catch the number one target and then say, eh, wrong guy. Never mind. That's also not to say that Abu Zubaydah wasn't a bad guy. He did establish the House of Martyrs safe house in Peshawar. He did create the Kandahar and Helmand training camps for Al-Qaeda.

[17:05] He did serve as a logistician for Al-Qaeda. If you were tired of Jihad and you just wanted to go home, you would talk to Abu Zubaydah and he would get you a false passport and get you a ticket home. Or if you were just arriving in Pakistan and you wanted to go to Afghanistan and make Jihad, he would be the one to get you over the mountains and into Pakistan. He's not a naïf here. He's not an innocent. He was a bad guy. He was just never a member of Al-Qaeda, and he was certainly never the number three. Summertime and the living is easy. Am I right, John?

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[25:39] We had to physically stand him up as he strapped tightly into the gurney. And we maneuvered him onto the plane, carried him to the back of the plane and laid him out across the luggage rack. And then we tied the luggage rack to the gurney. I squeezed his hand and leaned over and I whispered to him, remember, you have to cooperate. Good luck. He squeezed my hand back. My feelings toward Abuz-ebeta as a human being were contradictory.

[26:11] I said to him at one point, he's laying in this bed. He's naked. He has the most grisly injuries you've ever seen in your life. I have pictures that would make your hair stand up. I said to him at one point, I should hate you. I should want to kill you. And I don't. You're pathetic. You're just a scared young guy. He just kind of looked at me. I felt pity for him is what it was.

[26:42] I honestly did not know what was going to happen to him. I had no idea that this thing called enhanced interrogation techniques was in the offering. I genuinely didn't know what the next step was. I just assumed that the plane was literally going to fly from the hospital to wherever it is he was going to undergo treatment. I had convinced myself this was my operation. This was my prisoner. I had a right to know everything. Of course, I didn't have a right to know everything.

[27:13] And in fact, after I said goodbye and good luck, I turned around to walk away and there was a man on the plane who was dressed completely in black with a black balaclava. He says, John, what are you doing here? You lifted up his balaclava and he was my last boss in the counter-terrorism center. I said, oh, my God, what are you doing here? I'm here to take your prisoner. Who is he by the way? And I said, oh, dude, I'm so sorry. You don't have a need to know. And I said, that is true. I don't. OK, man, safe travels.

[27:44] We high-fived each other and I got off the plane. That was the last time I ever saw Abuz-Ubeida. But that short 10 second conversation put things back into perspective for me. Yes, I was part of the team that caught Abuz-Ubeida. Yes, I sat with him for 56 consecutive hours. I was the first to know that I was going to be a prisoner. For 56 consecutive hours, I was the first person to engage him in a meaningful conversation in any conversation, really.

[28:15] But there were a lot of other CIA officers that he was going to encounter in this experience. And as I told him, they weren't going to be as nice as I was. In the next episode of Dead Drop, what makes this spy tick? My work in Pakistan continued and we'll talk about that. Zane's interrogation continued to just not in the ways that it should have. How and why it went so far and so violently off the rails.

[28:46] Well, we're going to talk about that a lot. We'll talk about torture legally, ethically, culturally. As we get to that part of the story, more than anything, I want to give you the widest possible context. I want you to know everything that I knew. Well, everything that I'm allowed to tell you that is. I want to put you as deep inside my head and my experience as we can. If you're enjoying this podcast, please consider checking out my other podcasts. There's Deep Program, which I do with political cartoonist, Ed Rawl.

[29:20] Deep Program appears every day Monday through Friday on YouTube and Rumble. That's at 9 a.m. Eastern. Deep Focus also appears on YouTube. Episodes drop twice a week. And both are definitely worth a listen. Again, don't forget to like, share, rate and or review us. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast. And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

[30:12] This podcast is a cost of Touchstone production.
