# Alex Station

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Alex Station," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/alex-station/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden beginning in 1995; per John Kiriakou, who served as chief of its counterintelligence branch, the unit kept extremely tight security around its files, limited FBI investigators' access to information about future 9/11 hijackers Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and under a deliberate policy of non-cooperation with the FBI, failed to watchlist participants in the Malaysia summit where al-Qaeda planned the attacks.*

- **Operator:** [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- **Mission:** Tracked Osama bin Laden, beginning 1995
- **Kiriakou's role:** Chief of the counterintelligence branch
- **Policy (per Kiriakou):** Deliberate non-cooperation with the FBI
- **Kiriakou's tenure:** About six weeks, after returning from Pakistan in 2002
- **Desk neighbour:** [Jennifer Matthews](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jennifer-matthews), a fellow branch chief
- **Spelling:** Rendered both "Alex" and "Alec" across the corpus

**Alex Station** was a CIA unit dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden, in operation since 1995. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) says he served as chief of its counterintelligence branch, though he says he did not have access to the unit's most closely held files.[1]

## Kiriakou's six weeks there

The job came to him on the strength of the [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) capture. Returning from heading counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, he was told the director wanted to see him; [Jim Pavitt](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jim-pavitt) shook his hand, thanked him for Pakistan and offered him the counterintelligence job in the bin Laden unit.[2][3] The work was mole-hunting: looking for al-Qaeda penetrations, probes and double agents aimed at the United States or at American embassies abroad.[4][5]

He held it for about six weeks. Pavitt, newly made associate deputy director, called and told him to come up to the seventh floor as his executive assistant, and Kiriakou accepted on the spot, a promotion [Jose Rodriguez](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jose-rodriguez) never forgave him for.[5][6][7] His immediate supervisor in the unit was an officer he names only as Marty, a friend since 1990 with whom he had served in a Middle Eastern country.[8] He sat next to [Jennifer Matthews](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jennifer-matthews), a fellow branch chief, later killed in the Camp Chapman bombing, and says he worked hand in glove with [Alfreda Bikowsky](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/alfreda-bikowsky).[9][10]

An earlier connection to the unit is even shorter. Kiriakou says he was absorbed into Alex Station on 12 September 2001, and that even inside it nobody had believed al-Qaeda would attempt an attack inside the United States: the conventional wisdom had been another multiple-embassy operation, probably in Africa.[11]

## Who was running it

The unit's leadership in the critical period is, in Kiriakou's telling, not who the public assumes. Michael Scheuer had been removed from Alex Station and was, in his phrase, collecting a government cheque to sit in the library, so it was Bikowsky who was running the unit; she later married the man who had headed it and had been its chief of operations, the officer who oversaw the torture programme.[12][13] Kiriakou dates his own arrival to just after that period, saying the counterintelligence job came to him immediately afterwards.[14]

## Tight security and limited FBI access

Kiriakou says Alex Station kept extremely tight security around its files and, on numerous occasions, limited FBI investigators' access to information, most significantly regarding future 9/11 hijackers Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.[15] He rejects the 9/11 Commission Report's characterization of the failure to share intelligence about those two men as accidental. As chief of the counterintelligence branch, he says he did not have access to the relevant files himself, and states plainly that the non-cooperation with the FBI was the product of an early, deliberate policy decision rather than an oversight.[1]

## The withheld visa and the Malaysia summit

Kiriakou says an Alex Station member, Tom Wilshire, blocked an FBI agent's effort to notify his superiors that hijacker Khaled al-Mihdhar held a U.S. visa in his passport, and then falsely told the rest of the CIA that the information had in fact been shared with the FBI.[16] Kiriakou says Alex Station also broke CIA protocol by failing to watchlist any of the participants in the Malaysia summit, the meeting at which al-Qaeda devised the September 11 plot.[17]

He attributes these failures to an arrogant belief at the top of Alex Station that the CIA could recruit the future hijackers and turn them into double agents against al-Qaeda, rather than simply informing the FBI so it could arrest them.[18] Asked directly, Kiriakou says he can neither confirm nor deny that Richard Blee was part of Alex Station's leadership.[19]

The recruitment theory did not originate with him. Kiriakou says he put the question to the researcher who had worked on it over dinner, and was told that the best available explanation, one [Richard Clarke](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-clarke) also believed, was that Alex Station thought it could recruit the San Diego cell.[20] His own judgement is harder on the unit and on the account Scheuer has given publicly: there was talk of recruiting those men, they were not recruitable, and nobody tried very hard. What produced the failure, he says, was a petty bureaucratic fight over integrating the two agencies' computer databases.[21]

## Before and after

Kiriakou's own July 2001 experience is the counterpoint to the later claim that nobody saw it coming: hosting six Middle Eastern military intelligence officers, he scheduled a thirty-minute overview of al-Qaeda from the most junior available analyst, and instead [Cofer Black](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cofer-black) walked in with the chief of operations of Alex Station and told the room straight out that something terrible was going to happen, they did not know exactly when or what.[22][23][24] Alex Station, he says, had been saying from the very beginning that they were going to attack.[25]

Afterwards, nobody inside was blamed. Kiriakou recalls no finger-pointing at all, not even among his more suspicious colleagues; Cofer Black was made the fall guy instead, George Tenet having ingratiated himself with the president and protected the deputy directors he had handpicked, and Rodriguez being too low on the totem pole to absorb it.[26][27]

## See also

- [Ali Mohamed](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ali-mohamed)
- [CIA–FBI interagency rivalry and 9/11](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-fbi-911-interagency-rivalry)
- [Cofer Black](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cofer-black)
- [Alfreda Bikowsky](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/alfreda-bikowsky)
- [Jennifer Matthews](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jennifer-matthews)
- [Jim Pavitt](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jim-pavitt)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 19:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1193s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
2. CIA Spy on 9/11, Enhanced Interrogation, AI, Jeffrey Epstein | John Kiriakou | Part 2 (2023-11-19), at 1:22:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynMg7-QfL10&t=4952s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-11-19-dalton-fischer-kiriakou-part-2/
3. “CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Torture, Truth & Traum (2025-07-17), at 28:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oi61wpeGnA&t=1700s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-17-barracks-media-inc/
4. An Interview With John Kiriakou (CIA Whistleblower On Th (2022-07-23), at 10:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULlvbl5ym8E&t=653s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-07-23-the-darkened-hour/
5. The Real Threat Is Inside: Ex-CIA Officer Exposes America's Hidden Terror Program (2025-05-28), at 44:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5_5mB3_Y-8&t=2679s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-05-28-ironclad-hidden-terror-program/
6. CIA Whistleblower Exposes Black Sites, Epstein Secrets & Bin Laden (2025-07-25), at 08:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyQimLepfL0&t=531s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-25-gold-shields/
7. CIA Spy on 9/11, Enhanced Interrogation, AI, Jeffrey Epstein | John Kiriakou | Part 2 (2023-11-19), at 1:23:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynMg7-QfL10&t=5013s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-11-19-dalton-fischer-kiriakou-part-2/
8. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-09-22), at 26:10. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJPxC4mXVkM&t=1570s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-22-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
9. #279 — Epstein, Bin Laden, China & Israel (2025-02-28), at 25:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scrGRKVa-Q4&t=1539s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-28-epstein-bin-laden-china-israel/
10. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-11), at 39:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE69sAdUisw&t=2389s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-11-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
11. Ep. 5264 – John Kiriakou on What Could Have Prevented 9/ (2020-05-25), at 29:18. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhjFW9ey15U&t=1758s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2020-05-25-scott-horton/
12. Ep. 5832 - John Kiriakou on the CIA, FBI, JFK and 9/11 - (2023-01-04), at 35:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1tRqZKo4q0&t=2111s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-04-scott-horton/
13. Ep. 5832 - John Kiriakou on the CIA, FBI, JFK and 9/11 - (2023-01-04), at 34:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1tRqZKo4q0&t=2079s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-04-scott-horton/
14. Ep. 5832 - John Kiriakou on the CIA, FBI, JFK and 9/11 - (2023-01-04), at 35:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1tRqZKo4q0&t=2141s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-04-scott-horton/
15. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 19:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1162s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
16. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 20:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1225s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
17. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 20:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1256s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
18. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 22:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1350s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
19. John Kiriakou Part III: 9/11, Israeli Spying, CIA Media Manipulation (2025-09-19), at 23:01. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhhPsbO9GU&t=1381s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-19-harrison-berger/
20. Ep. 5264 – John Kiriakou on What Could Have Prevented 9/ (2020-05-25), at 25:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhjFW9ey15U&t=1538s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2020-05-25-scott-horton/
21. Ep. 5264 – John Kiriakou on What Could Have Prevented 9/ (2020-05-25), at 27:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhjFW9ey15U&t=1663s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2020-05-25-scott-horton/
22. INSIDE THE CIA: What They Aren't Telling You — John Kiri (2024-12-21), at 1:46:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYx6oycyKww&t=6375s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-12-21-not-a-grayman/
23. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 1:00:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=3625s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-11-13-julian-dorey-250/
24. John Kiriakou: CIA's Secret Torture Programs, Mk-Ultra, 9-11, and Why Obama Threw Him in Jail (2025-06-04), at 2:01:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwBMKwt14IU&t=7284s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-06-04-tucker-carlson-cia-torture-mk-ultra-911/
25. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 58:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=3530s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-11-13-julian-dorey-250/
26. Ep. 5264 – John Kiriakou on What Could Have Prevented 9/ (2020-05-25), at 39:48. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhjFW9ey15U&t=2388s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2020-05-25-scott-horton/
27. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 58:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=3499s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-11-13-julian-dorey-250/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/alex-station/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt