# The Convenient Terrorist > **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 Convenient Terrorist," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-convenient-terrorist/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *Book co-written by John Kiriakou and former Guantanamo guard Joe Hickman on the case of Abu Zubaydah, split half and half between the hunt and capture on one side and the detention on the other; Kiriakou dates the decision to write it to a declassified CIA inspector-general report that told him the intelligence he had risked his life on was false.* - **Full title:** The Convenient Terrorist: Abu Zubaydah and the Weird Wonderland of America's Secret Wars - **Authors:** [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) and Joe Hickman - **Subject:** [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) - **Publisher:** Skyhorse - **Year:** 2017 - **Division of labour:** Kiriakou on the hunt, capture and torture; Hickman on the detention - **Stated trigger:** A [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) inspector-general report written in 2005 and declassified after Kiriakou left the agency ***The Convenient Terrorist: Abu Zubaydah and the Weird Wonderland of America's Secret Wars*** is the book [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) co-wrote about the prisoner whose capture he led. He has said that more than fifteen years after the capture no one had written a book-length account of the case, so he wrote one himself, published by Skyhorse in 2017 with cover blurbs from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Oliver Stone.[1][2] ## Two custodians, half a book each The co-author, Joe Hickman, was the [Guantanamo](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/guantanamo-bay) guard who had taken custody of [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) from the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) — the other end of the chain Kiriakou had begun. The book divides on that seam: Kiriakou wrote the half covering the hunt, the capture and the torture, and Hickman the half covering the detention, so that the volume is two whistleblowers' accounts of the same man rather than one author's narrative.[3][4] Kiriakou describes the collaborator in a later telling simply as *"a former guard from Guantanamo who actually guarded Abu Zubaydah."*[5] ## The report that started it Kiriakou dates the decision to a document rather than to a reflection. After he left the CIA, the agency's inspector general released a report that had been written in 2005 and since declassified, and it was there, he says, that the information about the case finally came out.[6] > *"My God, we risked our lives for a lie. The whole thing was a lie. I was ready to die for my country out there. And it was all based on a lie."* The lie he means is the composite that had justified the operation: that [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) was the number three in al-Qaeda, which he was not, and the reporting that had made him appear to be everywhere at once, which turned out to describe [two different men of the same name](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/two-abu-zubaydahs). It was on reading the report, Kiriakou says, that he connected with Hickman and the two of them wrote the book.[6][5] ## Why it was written, and the reviews that vanished Kiriakou's account of the book's origin is that the publisher approached him. Skyhorse came to him and asked him to write it with Joe Hickman, a former [Guantanamo](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/guantanamo-bay) guard and himself a whistleblower — and the gap it filled was, in his telling, remarkable on its own: *"here we are fifteen years plus after the capture of [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah), and nobody had written the definitive book about him."* Their qualification was custodial: *"I was the one who captured him. Joe was the one who guarded him at Guantanamo. We both know the man personally."*[7] He is careful to place the book between two positions rather than at one of them. Abu Zubaydah *"is a bad guy,"* and the defence team is wrong to present him as *"just this poor guy … the wrong guy"* — but equally *"he's not the monster that the CIA wants people to believe that he was."*[8] The reception surprised him. *"It's been far more controversial than I thought it would be,"* with people from both the CIA and the FBI lining up to condemn it — and, he says, succeeding in getting two reviews killed. One was in *The Daily Beast*, which he shrugs off. The other mattered: *Newsweek* had promised the authors the cover and a three-thousand-word excerpt, due to run three weeks before the interview, and it *"just kind of evaporated."*[8][9] ## See also - [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) - [The two Abu Zubaydahs](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/two-abu-zubaydahs) - [Doing Time Like a Spy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/doing-time-like-a-spy) - [Guantanamo Bay](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/guantanamo-bay) - [Enhanced interrogation techniques](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/enhanced-interrogation) ## Sources 1. 5-26-17 Nicole Sandler Show - Our Dangerous World with J (2017-05-26), at 57:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLiupCJPu_I&t=3473s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-26-nicole-sandler/ 2. THE NEVER BROKEN PODCAST (2026-05-09), at 14:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_KYmRx24Q&t=874s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-09-the-never-broken-podcast-the-never-broken-podcast/ 3. 5-26-17 Nicole Sandler Show - Our Dangerous World with J (2017-05-26), at 58:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLiupCJPu_I&t=3503s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-26-nicole-sandler/ 4. 10-2-19 Nicole Sandler Show - The Public Trust with John K (2019-10-02), at 34:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3IkX9p5LqA&t=2070s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-10-02-nicole-sandler/ 5. TCM Originals (2026-01-13), at 04:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybQ-x4y8ZEo&t=283s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-13-tcm-originals-tcm-originals/ 6. TCM Originals (2026-01-13), at 04:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybQ-x4y8ZEo&t=252s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-13-tcm-originals-tcm-originals/ 7. John Kiriakou Ex CIA Spy Tells All (2017-08-11), at 11:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soundcloud337497090&t=679s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-11-kate-dalley-radio-john-kiriakou-ex-cia-spy-tells-all/ 8. John Kiriakou Ex CIA Spy Tells All (2017-08-11), at 11:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soundcloud337497090&t=715s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-11-kate-dalley-radio-john-kiriakou-ex-cia-spy-tells-all/ 9. John Kiriakou Ex CIA Spy Tells All (2017-08-11), at 12:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soundcloud337497090&t=746s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-08-11-kate-dalley-radio-john-kiriakou-ex-cia-spy-tells-all/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-convenient-terrorist/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt