Title: re-upload/clip channel
Show: Veil veil veil 3
Date: 2026-01-02
URL: https://youtu.be/oTEqohDrY7M
Duration: 28:00

---

[00:00] July the 6th, 2001. I I remember it like it was yesterday. I told you I was in this position where I was training Middle Eastern intelligence services in counterterrorism operations. [music] And so we had this delegation of, you know, four mid-level guys, majors and lieutenant colonels. And uh totally normal liaison visit. They come in the morning. We have a day of briefings. We take them upstairs to meet the director. They shake his hand. They get a little photo op. We exchange gifts. I drop them off at the hotel and I tell them rest

[00:31] up. I'll be back in 3 hours. And you take them to Ruth's Chris steakhouse. And then the next day you do it with a different intelligence service and a different one again the next day after that. [music] So that day uh July the 6th, 2001, I had booked a [music] 30 minute briefing with this junior like 25year-old kid on [music] al-Qaeda. So the time came for the briefing and instead of this young kid in comes Kofheer Black, the director of counterterrorism and a woman who was

[01:04] not affectionately known as the red-headed devil who was portrayed in uh Zero Dark 30. So they come in together and I was so surprised I stood up and I said, "Oh," I said, "Gentlemen, this is Kofheblack. He's the director of the counterterrorism center here at the CIA. And this is the chief of operations for the Osama bin Laden unit. I was shocked, like speechless. And they sat down and Kofheer looks at these guys and just goes right into it. He says, "Something terrible is going to happen. We don't

[01:34] know where or when, but we know it'll be an attack on an unprecedented scale." He said, "We're picking up chatter from the al-Qaeda training camps where the instructors are on the phone with their students and they're crying and saying, "I'll see you in paradise." We're hearing code words for a massive attack. The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities of honey or there's going to be an enormous wedding or a great football match is coming. They're all

[02:04] codes for an attack, but we don't know where or when it's going to be. He said, "I'm begging you. If you have any sources inside al-Qaeda, please help us." And they just sat there looking at him. And I was like, "Seriously?" So, he got up, shook their hands, we finished the day. I uh sent them back to the hotel. And then I went to Kofheer's office to thank him. I said, "Keoffer, wanted to thank you for spending the time with these guys, but I got to ask you, I don't work on al-Qaeda. Were you saying that for their benefit or were

[02:35] you serious?" and he said, "Oh, I'm deadly serious. Something terrible is going to happen." And then September 11th, it's kind of a quaint story now, but on on the morning of September 11th, Kofer and I had a meeting scheduled with Condi Rice. She was the National Security Adviser at the time, and it was over the stupidest reason. The Government Printing Office, this obscure little government agency that prints all the official reports, was going to print a report that literally nobody would ever read called Foreign Policy of the

[03:06] United States, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, 1949 to 1967. Nobody's ever going to read that. But there is a law in the United States that says that if an official of the United States outs the identity of a recruited asset, we h we have to offer that asset protection, which means American citizenship, a house, money to get started. Well, there were still three guys like in their 90s

[03:36] that would have been outed with publication of these declassified documents. It just never occurred to anybody that someone would still be alive whom the American embassy was meeting in the 40s, right? So, we had this meeting with Condi to ask her just to pull those cables out of the out of the book, right? We're not asking her to make up different names. We're just pull cables out. Nobody's going to know. They're nobody's going to know the difference. So, the driver called me and said he was ready to pick us up and he's

[04:06] outside the west uh entrance. So, I walked over to Kofheer's office to say, "The driver's here." And his secretary had a little TV on her on her desk. Back in those days, you couldn't watch TV on your computer, right? So, she had this little tiny TV. >> One of the one of the towers of the World Trade Center was on fire. I said, "What happened to the World Trade Center?" And she said, "A plane flew into it." And I always say, because I'm a genius, I said, "You know what? That happened once before in 1931. A plane flew into the Empire State

[04:38] Building, but it was really foggy and pouring down rain. I said, "It's so crystal clear today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center?" And as soon as the words came out of my mouth, the second plane hit. And she turned to me and she said, "Did you see that or did I imagine it?" And I ran back to my office and I said, "Guys, two planes just flew into both towers of the World Trade Center. I think we're under attack. I think this is what Kofheer was talking about." So we all run into what what was then called the bullpen. The the main office back then

[05:10] of the counterterrorism center was this enormous room where there were private offices all around the perimeter of the room and then everybody else sat in cubicles. Well, there were so many cubicles that we had to name the pathways. So it was like Bin Laden Boulevard, Hezbollah Highway, right? We named one after George Tannet and one after a previous head of counterterrorism. So you could say if you're meeting somebody, I'm at the intersection of Winston Wy Way and Hezbollah Highway and they would know

[05:41] where to find you. So we all run up there. There were these TVs that were mounted on from the ceiling and each TV was on different networks. It was like CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC, uh, Canal PL, the Russians, you know, everybody had a TV, dead silence in the office. We're watching the World Trade Center burn. And then somebody behind me shouts, "Will someone please lead?" And it was like slapping Kofer in the face. He's

[06:12] like, "Right, you go to the director's office and tell him X. You go to security and tell him something else. you go to operations and you know whatever and we all continue to just stand there and watch it and then the Pentagon gets hit and then somebody says we should probably assume that the next plane is meant for us. We didn't know the White House, the capital, us logical targets. Nobody budged. So one of the cops came in we the CIA has its own

[06:42] police force called the special protective officers. And so he came in he says everybody evacuate. Nobody moved. He came back in 45 minutes later and said, "If you don't evacuate, you'll be placed under arrest." So, everybody evacuated. But imagine, you know, whatever 10, 15, 20,000 people all leaving the parking lot at exactly the same time. It took me 2 hours to get out of my parking space. Might as well have just stayed in the building. >> I could have walked home. I only lived at seven miles from the from the

[07:14] headquarters. So, finally, I got into the George Washington Parkway. I got about halfway to my apartment and it was gridlock. So, I just abandoned my car on the side of the highway. I walked the last three and a half miles. I I could see the Pentagon burning from my car. And I remember saying out loud, "How could this happen? How could we allow this to happen?" And my then girlfriend called me. She was on the sixth floor of headquarters. She later became my wife. And uh she said, "Where are you?" I said, "I I just abandoned my car on the

[07:44] GW Parkway. Where are you?" She said, "I'm just getting out of headquarters." I said, "You're not going to be able to make it past the halfway point. Just meet me at my house or my apartment." So, she finally met me at my apartment. We we went to the roof and just watched the Pentagon burn for a couple of hours. And then I said, "We should try to give blood or something." Well, there there were lines to give blood that that were blocks long. And then finally, I said, "This is ridiculous. We we should get back to work." So, we walked back to my car. I drove over the the grassy median,

[08:15] went back to headquarters, and then I didn't leave for the next four days. We I I just baldled up my jacket and slept under the desk, and we took a bolt cutters and and cut the chains on the cafeteria. We had to write the Marriott again cuz they had the food uh concession. We had to write the Marriott a check for $10,000 cuz we stole all their food and we cooked it and we put it on folding tables in the hallway so people could just graze as they were working. But everybody worked. And then like everybody else in the building, the very next day, I went into the deputy

[08:46] director's office. I said, "You've got to send me to Afghanistan. I'm one of the only fluent Arabic speakers in the office. You have to send me." Uh, relax. Okay, relax, relax. Take it easy. We're not really sure what's going on yet. All right. I went three times over the next six weeks. You've got to send me to Afghanistan. Finally, I ran into a guy that I knew, an old-timer. He was in his 70s then, Billy Wah. legendary special forces guy. 17 Purple Hearts, one short of the national record. Even

[09:16] his license plate, it said 17 hits and it was a a Purple Heart license plate. Very cool, legendary guy. So, I ran into him. We had just done an operation together in the Middle East and we got back like two or three days before 911. So, I ran into him and I said, "Billy, where you been?" And he goes, "Been in Afghanistan." I go, "You have? What are you doing there? He looks at me, he goes, I've been killing people. What do you think I've been doing? I said, that's why they haven't sent me because

[09:48] I was always the good cop and they didn't need translators. >> They're not interrogating anybody. They're just blowing their brains out. So, I was like, "Okay, okay." So, I I said, "I'm going to try one more time." I went back into the deputy director's office and I said, 'You have to send me to Afghanistan. And if you don't, I'm going to quit and I'm going to go straight to Exxon with my Arabic and make triple what I make here and I'm not looking back. He's like, all right, take it easy. Can you go to Pakistan? I said,

[10:18] yes. When? Tomorrow. Yes. What do you want me to do? He said, I want you to be chief of counterterrorism operations. I said, good. So, I I called my girlfriend. I said, I got to go to Pakistan tomorrow. She said, 'Okay, how long? I said, 'I don't know, 6 months, 9 months, a year, I don't know. She says, 'Okay, I'll meet you at your place. I'll help you pack. And then she drove me to the airport the next morning and I went to Pakistan. So enhanced interrogation techniques, as they were approved by the Justice Department, were mostly not something that I would call torture.

[10:49] Like if I grab you by the shirt and I say, "Damn you, answer my questions." That's not torture. If uh the the next the next most serious one was called the belly slap, right? It makes a cracking sound. Makes a handprint. A little bit humiliating. That's not torture. >> But are you like naked, chained up? >> Not yet. That comes >> keyword yet. >> Yeah. A smack across the face. That's not very nice. But it's probably not torture. But then you get into things like strip the guy naked, chain him to

[11:20] an eyebolt in the ceiling, and make it so he can't kneel or sit or lay or get comfortable in any way. chill the cell to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and then throw a bucket of ice water on them every hour. We murdered uh prisoners with that technique. It's called the cold cell. Sleep deprivation is another one. Uh Don Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense at the time. He famously said that he didn't believe that there was such a thing called sleep deprivation because he said, "Look at me. I have a standup

[11:50] desk in my office. I don't even have a a chair and I'll stand there and work for 24 hours, sometimes longer than 24 hours. That's not what we were talking about. What we're talking about is being stripped naked and chained to that eyebolt so you can't get comfortable knowing that the American Psychological Association has done studies showing that people begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep. They begin to die from organ failure at day nine, but

[12:21] the CIA was was authorized to keep patients patients to keep prisoners awake for up to 12 days. Well, we murdered prisoners doing that. The Justice Department never said we could murder people. They said we could use these techniques, which are not torture. They're enhanced parts of the interrogation. Well, that was just silly. Let me give you some background first. MK Ultra was a program that started in the early 1950s and it started by accident. We had a source who

[12:54] turned out to be a fabricator saying the Russians are doing mind control experiments. We were like, "Oh my god, we're going to be behind the Russians. All right, we got to do our own mind control experiments. The Russians are doing ESP experiments." We said, "Oh my god, we have to hire all the the psychics in America and try and get them to do mind control." So we came up with this thing that was called MK Ultra and it was composed of several different sub operations MK chipwit for example. So we

[13:25] were doing things like what would happen if we gave people LSD and they didn't know it. Let's try that. See what happens. Well who should we do it to? Let's do it to our own people. Just see what happens. Well I'll tell you what happens. They start jumping out of windows and off of roofs of buildings and committing suicide. They're like, "That didn't work." Okay, why don't we hire prostitutes? This is true. We'll hire prostitutes in San Francisco. We'll have them pick up John's. We'll bring the John's back to a

[13:56] safe house that we control. We'll dose them with LSD. We'll tie them up and interrogate them and see if they'll tell us their deepest secrets. No, they just went nuts. That's all that happened. And then we release them. And then they're just wandering the streets of San Francisco nuts. Then they said, "How about if we come up with a germ and we spread the germ all around San Francisco and see if people get sick." So they came up with this germ. They waited until a really foggy day when the air is

[14:29] very heavy and it sits on the ground, right? Cuz what's fog? It's a cloud that sits on the ground. And within days, 11 people went to hospital emergency rooms with this rare strain of upper respiratory infection. We're like, "Hey, now we can do that in Havana, in Moscow, in East Berlin." But none of this led to, you know, reading minds or Manurion candidates or none of it worked. But it

[14:59] was brutal. And we made people insane. We made people commit suicide. We split families. And this was monstrous. Well, it it became public in 1975 in in the Church and Pike Committee hearings on Capitol Hill. So, it lasted from 1952 to 1975. And chairman uh Church, senior senator from Idaho, specifically ordered the CIA director not to destroy the documents related to MK Ultra. He

[15:31] immediately went back to headquarters and destroyed 80% of the documents. So, we only have a little historical understanding of what happened with MK Ultra. Everything else was was shredded. People ask me all the time, is there MK Ultra today? Honestly, I have no idea. It's not called MK Ultra, but it's impossible to know what the CIA is doing on these mind control issues. Now, they're doing other things technologically that we know thanks to Wikileaks and Josh Schulty and the uh

[16:02] Vault 7 revelations, we know that they can take remote control of your car and make you drive off a bridge. >> Any car, >> any car, any car that has a computer in it, which is every car, unless you're driving a, you know, 57 Chevy or something. uh we know that they can take any smart TV any smart TV and turn the speaker into a microphone so that it broadcasts what's being said in the room even while the TV is off. Another thing that they did was they infected

[16:34] computers domestically which is illegal but then in the code they embedded lines of code written in either Farsy or Cerrillic. >> That's marble right project marble. >> Correct. So they could point say, "Oh, it wasn't us. It was the Russians, the Iranians. They did it. Look the code. They forgot to translate these lines of code. They're still in Russian and Farsy." No, it was it was us. So we don't really know what they are doing. And I and I'll I'll say this. I'm going to caveat this by saying I've been out of the CIA for 21 years now. That is a

[17:05] lifetime technologically speaking. It's a different world today than it was when I left the CIA. God knows what they can do that we haven't found out yet. Abu Zabeta is in Afghanistan. Abu Zaba is in Syria. It's like, oh my god, this is a terrorist superman. But it was two of them. We [music] didn't know cuz he's out out doing all this different stuff. Turned out he wasn't. Actually, the CIA will never permit him to be charged in a court of law. The torture report tells [music] us that the CIA has made a policy decision that Abu Zubeda will

[17:35] never leave Guantanamo ever. And when he does die, eventually he'll be cremated and his ashes thrown into the Caribbean. Billy was in Sudan working for Kofheer Black. Kofheer Black was the CI. >> No, he was US. >> Oh, CIA. >> CIA, but he was the senior. The term of art we're supposed to use is the senior CIA officer in country. The CIA does not acknowledge any such thing as a station. So whenever we talk about working

[18:06] overseas, that person was the senior CIA officer in country. >> Okay. >> Okay. So Billy's off one day and he decides to go down to the uh vegetable market and buy some vegetables for the week. He goes down with a buddy of his, also from the embassy. And you know, they're the only two white guys in in cartoon, they think. So they're in the vegetable market and Billy looks and he's looking at this guy and he says to his friend, "That's Carlos the Jackal." And the guy's like, "What? No, it's not." And Billy said, "Yeah, that's Carlos the Jackal." "No, I don't think

[18:36] so, Billy." Billy said, "I'm sure it is." They go back to the embassy. Kofheer's in his office on a what do you call this? Elliptical machine. Yeah. >> He's an elliptical machine. And uh Billy walks in. He says, "Keoffer, I just saw Carlos the Jackal." Kofheer says, "Get the [ __ ] out of here." >> He said, "No, I'm telling you, I was in the vegetable market and I saw him and I'm sure it's him." And he's like, "Well, I think you're nuts, but if it's Carlos the Jackal, we're going to have to confirm it." >> How old was Billy at this time? >> Oh, he was in his 70s. >> Okay. Yeah.

[19:06] >> Maniac. >> Late 60s, maybe. >> Wow. >> Yeah. Incredibly great shape after having been shot more than a dozen times over the course of three wars. So, uh, he went back down to that vegetable market every single day for a month. And then they saw Carlos again. So what they decided to do was they hired a couple of Sudin guys to stage a fist fight. Um in in Muslim countries it's very very unusual for you to ever witness um

[19:36] physical violence between people. People don't like you know we have videos on YouTube of Karen's they load load a thousand new ones every day >> in the Middle East. No, people don't do things like that. So they hired these two Sudin guys that were just down there in the market. um you know, you give them 10 bucks a piece and just tell them duke it out. So they duke it out and of course everybody forms a circle around them because this is so unusual. And Carlos comes to the circle to watch the fight and he's like craning his neck to try to get a better view and Billy's got a camera. Click click click click click

[20:07] click click click. So he goes back to the embassy. They send the pictures to CIA headquarters and they say, "Oh my god, it's Carlos the Jackal." Well, Billy had followed him back to his house so they knew where he lived. And what they ended up doing, I'm not sure how much detail I should get in. They ended up Carlos had a Carlos had a dental problem. And so, um, what you do is you get the dentist to say, "Hey, time for a checkup. Why don't you come on in?" And then you give him gas. And then when he wakes up, he's on a plane on his way to France. >> Oh my god.

[20:38] >> Wow. Yeah, that was Billy. Hero with capital letters. Hero. Didn't even have to touch the guy. No. Just got to his dentist. >> Yeah, that's it. That's incredible. >> Sometimes the best operations are the simplest. >> When you captured Abu Zabeta and he got shot, how how many years has it been since you captured him? >> Uh almost 22. >> 22. And he was Do you remember how old he was? >> Yeah. To the best of my recollection, he was like 25 or 27, something like that. He was very young. I remember being

[21:08] struck by his youth. I was young at the time. I was 30. Let me think. What was I? I was 37. >> Oh, wow. >> Mhm. And I remember thinking, "Wow, this is al-Qaeda. This is what we're so afraid of." You know, he's just a young guy, one of the most wanted men in the world. >> And that was probably one of the one of the most defining moments of your career in the CIA. >> Oh, it was it was the defining event of my of my life. >> What would you say to him if you got to meet him again? And do you think there's a possibility? Would you ever want to go

[21:39] like have a meeting with him in Guantanamo and talk to him? >> I'd like to. I've spoken to his attorney uh many times. You know, this is the reason why I'm still talking about this 22 years later. We believed at the time that Abu Zuba was the number three in al-Qaeda. He was identified by to us by the White House as the number three in al-Qaeda. Um he was identified in Time magazine which was a major publication at the time as the number three in al-Qaeda. uh we knew that he had founded al-Qaeda's safe house in Peshawar, Pakistan called the House of Martyrs and that's where people would stay as they

[22:09] were preparing to go to Afghanistan uh for for training, terrorist training. Not only did he establish the House of Martyrs, he also established al-Qaeda's two training camps in southern Afghanistan in Helman province and in Kandahar. Um so we knew this was a bad guy. If you were already in the fight and you wanted to go home, Abu Zubeda would forge a passport and get you tickets home. If you wanted to join the fight, he would get you to the House of Martyrs and then into Afghanistan and then from Afghanistan, he would get you

[22:40] to wherever it was you were supposed to go. So, this was a bad guy, but he was not the number three in al-Qaeda. >> No, >> no, he had never joined al-Qaeda. He talked about it, but he had never sworn an oath to uh Osama bin Laden. So he was viewed by Bin Laden and by the al-Qaeda leadership as an independent sort of a friendly independent >> like a guy like well like that bin Laden wouldn't give him a wink and a nod of approval like >> right okay >> now the bigger problem for us at the CIA and we didn't know this until 2005

[23:13] was that Abu Zubeda had a first cousin who was also named Abu Zubeta and so that Abu Zubeda was in Montana and then when 9/11 hit he said oh [ __ ] I got to get out of here. And he ran to Jordan. So our sister agencies are picking up intelligence here, there, and everywhere. Out of the air, out of the sky. Abu Zuba is in Aman. He's doing this. Abu Zabeda's in Pakistan. He's doing that. Abu Zubed is in Afghanistan. Abu Zaba's in Syria. It's like, oh my god, this is a terrorist superman,

[23:45] right? But it was two of them. >> Two of them. >> Two of them. We didn't know. And so we thought, well, if if he's able to move from country to country and he's plotting all these different operations, we got to stop this guy. We know that bin Laden's number one. We know that Zahedi is number two. Muhammad Atef was number three. We killed him in October of 01. So that means Abu Zuba must be the number three, right? Cuz he's out doing all this different stuff, right? >> And it turned out he wasn't actually.

[24:16] You know, this this is what makes this a sad story. And and this is why I would be willing to talk to Abu Zabeta. And this is why I am willing to talk to his attorney because first of all, he was not the terrorist Superman we thought he was. He was a bad guy. So if he was a bad guy, he should have been charged with a crime and put on trial as the Constitution says that he should and he should face his accusers in a court of law. Well, we know from the Senate torture report that the CIA will never permit him to be charged in a court of law. And in fact, the torture report

[24:48] tells us that the CIA has made a policy decision that Abu Zubeda will never leave Guantanamo ever. And when he does die, eventually he'll be cremated and his ashes thrown into the Caribbean. So remember, this is a guy who has never been charged with a crime. So why >> hold him, right? >> What is their reasoning or what is their explanation for that? They [ __ ] it up and they can't let any more get out into

[25:19] the public. Kiryaku was bad enough blabbing that, you know, we tortured him. But then the Senate torture report actually lays it all out blowby-blow by blow what they did to him. And then if we if we release him, what? He's going to be on every TV channel in the world talking about the torture that he underwent at the hands of the Americans. The CIA can't allow that. >> What would what would you say to him? I would say that I'm sorry for the way he's been treated. Nobody deserves to be treated this way. If he was the killer that we said he was, he should have been

[25:51] tried and convicted and punished accordingly. If he was not the killer that we said he was, he should be released. Khalik Muhammad is the he is the earthly incarnation of Satan. Khalik Muhammad is a perplexing character because, you know, he was an exchange student here. He went to he went to some state university in North Carolina, lived with an American family. He's utterly Americanized, but he self-radicalized when he went back to uh the Middle East or or to Pakistan. >> Mhm. >> He devoted many many years to hatching

[26:23] plans or plots to kill as many Americans as he possibly could. Well, before 9/11, there's something you and I have discussed in the past called the Bojinka plot. So the Bojinka plot was an idea that Khales Muhammad came up with in the Philippines to hijack. It was something like 710 747s and to fly them all into buildings up and down the west coast of the United States. He actually had a chance of that plot working and he had all these papers

[26:55] laid out, maps, drawings, notes, and he left his apartment and housekeeping went in to the apartment to clean the apartment. And the housekeeper is looking at this like, "What the heck is all this stuff? I better call the police." She calls the police. They said, "This looks like the plans for a terrorist attack." And so they set out to look for him. They didn't know his name. They only knew him by the name Mkhtar, which I think you and I have talked about in the past, but he escaped. He escaped from Manila. So, we

[27:25] knew that there was this very bad dude out there known as Mkhtar who was plotting this massive terrorist attack uh that would take place on the West Coast. So, we knew that Mkhtar was involved in the planning for 9/11. As it turned out, 9/11 was completely his idea, but we didn't know who he was. We didn't know what his real name was. And that was one of the two most important things that Abu Zuba gave us in his in his FBI uh interviews. >> Oh wow. >> Yeah. He actually laughed at the FBI agent Ali Sufan uh when Ali said, "We

[27:57] didn't know who Mktar was." He's like, "How can you not know who Mktar was? He's the most dangerous man in the world." And he said, "We don't know." "Oh, it's Khaled Shake Muhammad.
