John Kiriakou

But if there's one thing that the FBI is really good at, it's interrogations.

They've been doing interrogations effectively since the Nuremberg trials in 45 and 46.

These guys know what they're doing.

And so with Abu Zubaydah as an example, we captured Abu Zubaydah.

And normally overseas, the CIA has primacy.

Domestically, the FBI has primacy.

But 9-11 was still an open criminal investigation.

And so we sent Abu Zubaydah out to the secret site and the FBI took over.

The CIA was furious about this.

But there was an FBI agent by the name of Ali Soufan who did exactly as he was trained to do.

And he began to engage Abu Zubaydah in a conversation.

And Abu Zubaydah just gave him the silent treatment for weeks.

This went on for weeks, but you go in, you offer him a cup of coffee, you offer him an orange.

If he's cooperative, you'll let him write a letter to his mother, you know, whatever.

And finally he opened up and he gave us actionable intelligence that saved American lives.

And I'll give you two examples.

Number one, we had no idea what the Al Qaeda wiring diagram looked like.

We knew it was bin Laden and Zawadi.

And then we just didn't know anything.

what the organization was like, how it was built.