A targeting analyst is, in John Kiriakou’s account, a specialized CIA analyst assigned almost exclusively to the Directorate of Operations and its Counterterrorism Center, distinct from an intelligence analyst who reads all-source reporting and writes papers.[1][2] The targeting analyst instead pours through millions of pieces of data, “much of it metadata,” to physically locate a person — for only two reasons, to capture or to kill.[3] Kiriakou flew a targeting-analyst friend to Islamabad, who over several weeks built a butcher-paper “spiderweb” around Abu Zubaydah’s phone number — concentric layers of every contact — narrowing the search to 14 sites.[4][5]
Kiriakou has given the same core definition in numerous other interviews, consistently describing the targeting analyst as someone who sifts through millions of pieces of metadata to geolocate a single person so he can be captured or killed — distinct from a regular analyst who writes reports for policymakers.[6][7] In a fuller telling of the Abu Zubaydah search, Kiriakou says a CIA “targeteer” was flown in and narrowed Zubaydah’s possible location down to 14 sites by combing through thousands of pages of documents.[8] In another version, he describes calling headquarters to request a targeting analyst, who after about two weeks of work narrowed the search to 15 possible sites, prompting Kiriakou to organize the simultaneous raid.[9]
Kiriakou says the CIA’s use of skilled targeting analysts — capable of processing a million pieces of metadata to locate a target within about two weeks — made older methods like remote viewing operationally unnecessary once the discipline matured following its advent in the 1990s and its successes after 9/11.[10]