# The toll booth plan

> **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 toll booth plan," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/toll-booth-plan/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's first idea for catching Abu Zubaydah in 2002 — to put CIA officers dressed as Pakistanis in the toll booths of the Lahore–Faisalabad motorway and grab him as he came through — drawn from his own summer job as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and abandoned as, in his own words, a terrible idea.*

- **Proposed:** Early 2002, Pakistan
- **Basis:** Kiriakou's summer job as a Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collector
- **Fatal flaw:** 50,000 cars a day; only a four-year-old passport photograph
- **Outcome:** Dropped

The **toll booth plan** was the first scheme [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) proposed for capturing [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) — the man the operation called [Mr. Fish](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mr-fish) — after signals reporting placed him moving back and forth between Lahore and Faisalabad, with occasional trips to Peshawar and Karachi.[1][2]

The reasoning was personal. As a college student Kiriakou had spent a summer as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike — a job he says a crooked state senator got him — and so he knew how toll machines work.[3][4] A toll road connected Faisalabad and Lahore. The proposal was to put CIA officers dressed as Pakistanis in the booths as collectors, and grab the target when he came through one of them.[5]

Kiriakou's own verdict is unsparing: *"that was a terrible idea."* Fifty thousand cars a day went through those lanes, and all the Americans had was a four-year-old passport photograph — they did not really know what he looked like on any contemporary basis. He also could not stop picturing Sonny Corleone stopped at a toll booth and machine-gunned through the window.[6] Telling the story elsewhere he lists it among *"a couple of terrible ideas"* he came up with, and reports the flat response he got: no, not going to work, we're not going to do that.[7][8]

The underlying problem the plan was trying to solve was scale, and Kiriakou states it in the same breath: Lahore has twelve million people and Faisalabad eight, and being told the target is in one of them is no better than being told a man is in New York, *"go get him."*[9][2] What replaced it was a [targeting analyst](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/targeting-analyst) with a sheet of butcher paper, and then [thirteen simultaneous raids](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/site-13).

## See also

- [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah)
- [Mr. Fish](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mr-fish)
- [Targeting analyst](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/targeting-analyst)
- [Site 13](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/site-13)
- [Magic box](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/magic-box)

## Sources

1. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 02:39. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/
2. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 03:14. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/
3. "NOT SILENCED" - Part-1: The CIA and John Kiriakou - Stories Untold (2025-06-01), at 1:29:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8paaOJyEaU&t=5370s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-06-01-not-silenced-part-1/
4. CIA Spy Explains How the United States Betrayed Him (2022-05-23), at 47:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfYnLqYEnfw&t=2850s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-05-23-danny-jones-cia-spy-betrayed/
5. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 03:44. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/
6. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 04:15. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/
7. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 1:27:31. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=5251s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-11-13-julian-dorey-250/
8. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 1:28:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=5315s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-11-13-julian-dorey-250/
9. CIA Terrorist Hunter on Surviving Assassination & Nailing Al-Qaeda's #3 | John Kiriakou • 250 (2024-11-13), at 1:28:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HuyORiWoDM&t=5283s · 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/toll-booth-plan/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt