Mr. Fish
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Mr. Fish was the cover designation used by the CIA for Abu Zubaydah during the operation that led to his capture in Faisalabad in March 2002.

Why the name existed

The rule adopted at the outset of the operation, in John Kiriakou's account, was that the Pakistanis could not be told who the target was. He is careful about how he puts it, the Americans liked the Pakistanis and worked very closely with them, but did not know whom they could trust, and elsewhere states the concern plainly: that word would leak and reach al-Qaeda, allowing the target to escape. He has described his belief, confirmed to his satisfaction by hindsight, that there were effectively two parallel ISIs, one of them sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

So the Americans said only that they had a target who was a big fish. "A big fish" became "Mr. Fish", and the name stuck: Kiriakou went to the Pakistanis every day with the latest update on Mr. Fish and his movements. They understood the arrangement without resentment, he says, because they did not trust their own people either.

Compartmentation on the American side

The compartment ran inside the embassy as well. Not all the FBI officers and not all the CIA officers were read into the operation; the identity was held so tightly that even the two Directorate of Science and Technology officers flown out to build the magic box were told only that a VIP needed to be captured, and asked what was being done about Mr. Fish. Kiriakou's summary of the alternative is characteristically dry: to say that Abu Zubaydah is somewhere in Pakistan and you have to catch him "is a non-starter."

The name at the moment of capture

The cover name produced the operation's most disorienting exchange. Arriving at Site 13 in Faisalabad to find three men shot in the street, Kiriakou asked a Pakistani officer what had happened and was told: "We got him. We got your man. We got Mr. Fish." He was pointed at the man who looked closest to death. All the Americans had was a passport photograph four to six years old, showing a young, thin, handsome man with a closely cropped beard; the man bleeding in the street was clean-shaven, at least forty pounds heavier, with wild hair Kiriakou compares to Albert Einstein's on a bad day. His response was that it was definitely not Mr. Fish.

The identification was settled not by the face but by the ear, no two people on earth having the same ears, photographed, wired to headquarters, and confirmed five minutes later.

See also

- Abu Zubaydah
- ISI
- Magic box
- Pakistan Station (2002)
- The Punjab Elite Force
