# The post-9/11 name traces > **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: "The post-9/11 name traces," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/post-9-11-name-traces/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's account of his own assignment in the weeks after the September 11 attacks: with people walking into American embassies all over the world offering information on al-Qaeda, the CIA was buried under tens of thousands of names — sometimes thousands arriving in a single day — and needed, as he put it, an army of clerks to search them against its databases.* - **Period:** The weeks immediately after September 11, 2001 - **Source of the names:** Walk-ins at American embassies worldwide claiming information on al-Qaeda - **Volume per Kiriakou:** Tens of thousands of names; sometimes thousands in a single day - **The task:** Searching every name against CIA databases - **His description of the work:** 'We needed an army of clerks is what it amounted to' Asked by Paul Jay what he had actually been assigned to do in the two or three weeks after the September 11 attacks, John Kiriakou gave an answer that had nothing of the cinematic about it. It was mostly name traces. [1] ## An army of clerks All around the world, he said, people began walking into American embassies and saying that they had information on al-Qaeda, and giving up names. There were tens of thousands of these names, and sometimes thousands arriving in a single day. What was needed to deal with them, he said, was an army of clerks — officers to search all of the agency's databases for any information pertaining to each name that came in. [1] [2] ## The limits it exposed The same conversation shows why this mattered beyond the drudgery. Pressed on whether the CIA could have gone straight after [Osama bin Laden](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/osama-bin-laden) in the days after the attacks rather than launching a war, Kiriakou argued that the agency simply did not have the reach. To operate in [Kandahar](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kandahar) you need a sponsor, somebody on the ground to protect you and give you cover; you cannot, he said, just go and rent a hotel room and start looking for bin Laden. [3] He was equally blunt about the technical picture, telling his interviewer that there was no such thing as a live satellite feed then and none now — a claim treated at greater length in [the live satellite feed myth](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-live-satellite-feed-myth). [4] What the agency did have in that period was volume without resolution: an unmanageable inflow of unverified names from strangers, and no way to convert it quickly into anything actionable. Kiriakou's own account of the first hours of the attacks — the evacuation of headquarters, the four days he then spent sleeping under his desk — is recorded in [CIA–FBI interagency rivalry and 9/11](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-fbi-911-interagency-rivalry). ## See also - [CIA–FBI interagency rivalry and 9/11](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-fbi-911-interagency-rivalry) - [Osama bin Laden](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/osama-bin-laden) - [The Live Satellite Feed Myth](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-live-satellite-feed-myth) - [Kandahar](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kandahar) - [Counterterrorism Center](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/counterterrorism-center) - [Tora Bora](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/tora-bora) ## Sources 1. Real News — Reality Asserts Itself (2023-04-25), at 13:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE9ZRPJdvk&t=812s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-04-25-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-real-news-reality-asserts-itself/ 2. Real News — Reality Asserts Itself (2023-04-25), at 14:04. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE9ZRPJdvk&t=844s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-04-25-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-real-news-reality-asserts-itself/ 3. Real News — Reality Asserts Itself (2023-04-25), at 15:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE9ZRPJdvk&t=907s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-04-25-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-real-news-reality-asserts-itself/ 4. Real News — Reality Asserts Itself (2023-04-25), at 15:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE9ZRPJdvk&t=938s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-04-25-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-real-news-reality-asserts-itself/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/post-9-11-name-traces/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt