John Kiriakou

And we were planning at the time for our first big name capture, right?

Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

We had killed Mohammed Atif.

He was the head of what they called military affairs for Al-Qaeda.

We killed him at Tora Bora.

But then there was Abu Zubaydah.

And then there was this unknown person that we later killed.

learned was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

So we were looking for any of these four or five people.

And then there were others, those responsible for the embassy bombings in Africa, the USS Cole bombing.

So it just so happened that in February of 2002, we got a lead on Abu Zubaydah.

And we captured him.

It took us six weeks to track him down.

And we were close a couple of times.

Close where we would bust down the door and there's like an uneaten, like half-eaten sandwich on the counter, a cigarette still burning.

Sometimes we were a day or two behind him, but he knew we were looking and he knew we were close.

So we finally got him.

And then the question is, what do you want to do with him?

And they told me, hang on to him.

We're going to send out a plane and we'll take it from there.