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The Lahore safe house

The ten-bedroom house in the best neighbourhood of Lahore that the CIA bought outright for two million dollars in cash in March 2002, on a cover story invented on the spot — that its buyers were textile barons — and from whose roof the team could catch seven satellites.

The Lahore safe house was the operational base for the raids that captured Abu Zubaydah. John Kiriakou says the first thing he asked Colonel Khaled for was not men or weapons but an estate agent.[1]

Choosing it

The agent showed them several very large houses. The one they took was in the part of the city “where everybody would want to live” — the Beverly Hills of Lahore, though Kiriakou says he is not permitted to name the district — with ten bedrooms and ten bathrooms, on the expectation that if they caught as many people as they hoped, they would need the space to conduct interrogations.[2] In another telling he puts it plainly: ten bedrooms they could use to interrogate ten prisoners at a time.[3]

The decision was made on the roof. Standing on the flat roof with a military-grade GPS unit, the team found they could acquire seven satellites from up there. Kiriakou looked at his colleague, his colleague looked at him, and he said: this is the place.[4]

Textile barons

They offered cash, and the estate agent asked what the buyers did for a living. Exhausted and having never worked out a cover story, Kiriakou’s colleague answered: “we’re textile barons.” Kiriakou agreed that yes, they were textile barons — whereupon the agent decided they must be the owners of the factories outside town, blessed them for bringing jobs to Pakistan and employing everybody in that part of the country, and was told in return that they loved Pakistan and that the quality was unparalleled.[5][6] Faisalabad’s industry is textiles, much of it exported to the United States, which is what made the story land.[7]

They paid two million dollars in cash for a house probably worth about one million seven.[6]

What it was used for

The house held the Lahore assault team and served as the assembly point on the night of the raids: Kiriakou briefed five dozen CIA, FBI, ISI and Punjab Elite Force personnel there standing on a coffee table, with a chartered bus idling outside to carry the Faisalabad teams.[8][9] One detail of its siting mattered more than the satellites: a McDonald’s visible in the distance from the front of the house, which Kiriakou filed away and later used as the final landmark in navigating back to it in the dark.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  2. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  3. ↑ Lazaros Sideras, 2026-05-31 — 34:01 on YouTube · Transcript
  4. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  5. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  6. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  7. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  8. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript
  9. ↑ John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, 2026-02-23 · Transcript

Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.

Categories: Places