Transcript for:
Insights from Sarah Adams on Terrorism

my next guest is a former CIA analyst and targeter who now currently works for the US Department of Defense now originally my goal with this episode was to expound on the Benghazi episode with Mark G and unpack some of the things that went on behind the scenes where the ball was dropped and to talk about what the terrorists behind that attack are doing now now we actually got a lot more than that in this episode and some questions that are arising especially very recently with the things going on in Israel have been answered one of those questions is are terrorists coming up through our Southern border well here's the answer yes I know that's a shocker to some of you but Sarah my next guest who's been tracking these guys for many years is Now tracking them coming up through our Southern border that's what happens when you leave a border wide open to a country who has a lot of enemies now we're going to have to deal with this at some point but if you get anything out of this episode please like comment and subscribe head over to Apple podcast and Spotify please leave us a review ladies and gentlemen I just want to point something out why is mainstream media not talking to people like my next guest think about that nobody is more relevant on this topic than her she's tracking these guys coming up through our border anyways those of you that have been taking our content thank you we see the reels you're making if you want you can download tons of free content link is in the description post it everywhere monetize it make money all we ask is that you tag the Shawn Ryan Show anyways patreon I love you ladies and gentlemen without further Ado please welcome Sarah Adams former CIA analyst and targeter to the Shawn Ryan Show love you all [Music] cheers Sarah Adams welcome to the Sha Ryan show thank you great to be here so we've been batting back and forth for I think a little over a year now and then uh I wanted to get Mark in here before I got your interview we had Mark in last we released his episode last week about Benghazi and uh I really wanted to get into some of the stuff that the Obama administration had to do uh with the with the teams that could have gone in and helped um and you know a lot more about that than Mark so I think you're the perfect person to kind of fill in the gaps there but um and then on top of that we got a whole bunch of other stuff to talk about current Day stuff some of your career at the agency but let me give you a quick introduction so Sarah Adams author of Benghazi know thy enemy former CIA officer Libyan crisis before during and after the 911 attacks counterterrorism analyst and targeter for the CIA senior adviser on the select Comm committee on Benghazi so just for the audience real quick can you go over the difference between an analyst at CIA and a targeter yeah I mean the most simple thing is an analyst their day-to-day job is to answer the questions policy makers give so maybe a congressman will ask a CIA what is happening with the oil facilities in Libya for example and they'll pull all the info together the CI collected write it up and answer that question obviously they're most known for answering questions to the president the targeter was created it's a newer position it was created around the time I joined the agency um and it was to bridge the gap between case officers and analyst so it was supposed to be like an operational node that took the best from analysts took the best from targeters and helped move operations forward so the focus of it is to move operations forward okay okay so I got a couple questions we have a subscription Network on patreon and that's basically what enables me to do this job and um so this was a pretty good question from one of our patrons um what was the moment that made you realize that the government was going to lie about what happened in Benghazi how did this make you feel was this a revelation to you or had you seen similar things like this happen before Benghazi sure there there's kind of like two big lies obviously to do with Benghazi there was the one of the fake protest narrative and then the one of the fake that the GRS responded immediately so the the GRS was our Global Response staff so that's what Oz was that was on your show previously and they're the ones who went to Aid the Ambassador after the attack happened um that one I pretty much knew in real time they were covering it up because um the team lead um for the GRS and triple like whispering to me when I arrived back in Tripoli after the attacks and I was like okay this is already a hush hush thing he told me it outside um I already had the indication that the CIA was going to cover that piece up the protest narrative it was about a week after the attacks we got the two um consulate surveillance videos in so it was the video from the state compound and then the video from the CIA compound and we obviously saw there was no protest which nobody in country thought there's a protest anyway no one in Libya believed there's a protest nobody in town reported a protest but when we watched the videos there was no protest so we call headquarters and they said well we're not going to change the narrative until you bring us the videos and so they said oh you need to curry them back over we actually found a way to digitally send them so we sent them within 24 hours and they never changed the narrative they didn't no so that's when I realize okay the narrative is what they want they don't actually care if there's facts whether there's a protest or not how did that make you feel oh I was pretty angry and luckily our chief of station at the time he agreed there was no protest cuz there wasn't one it's so strange in country we didn't argue about a protest right nobody thought there was a protest it was a weird DC thing we didn't sit around arguing about a protest you know we're doing our jobs we're trying to find the attackers trying to figure out who was involved so he would write desense to like all the the CIA would write all these reports about the protest and he would send a sense you know um chief of station tripley does does not agree with this prce that there was not a protest so that's really all we could do from the field as you know cuz the field sometimes gets overruled by what headquarters thinks is the truth yeah yeah you know you've been following you you still continue to follow a lot of these guys that were involved in the attack and we're going to get into some of that and and what the outcome was with some of them I mean has there been any justice at all there's been a little bit of Justice there there was some of our attackers killed in US drone strikes only one of them was targeted for who he was but he wasn't targeted to do with Benghazi he was targeted to do with Isis the other ones they targeted the wrong group or they got lucky and got our guy um the French did Kill the top three um like North African Al-Qaeda members of our attacks so we got a little bit of Justice from them and then the Libyan National Army killed um The Mastermind of the CIA Annex piece of the attack and the good part is he killed in a mortar strike so um so we we kind of appreciate that nice good I for an eye right hey take them out that way there's no other way you could have taken him out honestly yeah no kidding well hey before we get too into the weeds and uh dive in everybody always gets a gift oh thank you so there you go okay very nice and good it's all coffee too cuz I had to confirm with you that there was nothing with pot in any of these Y no PO there's some weird rumors everybody thinks wait wait you gave me performance mushrooms I probably can't do this oh no this is good stuff okay this is these are these are legal mushrooms but you have you heard a lot of the benefits from mushrooms that have been going on in the community a lot so I did I did a psychedelic treatment it was I got a ton of benefits from it ton of Blackwater people have been doing this yeah you know huge it's really getting out there and so that kind of got me into looking into the benefits of functional mushrooms and all that stuff's from L superfood they have the finest ingredients and uh yeah so mix that with your coffee don't yeah I mean I'm going to first sure Del I can have mushrooms and then I'm going to mix it in my coffee you are good to go with that I promise thank you but uh it's all about brain health here so that's why that's why I give that out but um all right so let's get into it you ready yep all right so let's talk about about how you got into the agency what year did you go I joined in 2006 and I have the most boring route ever into the agency I applied online it can it works people yeah I um it was the night before I defended my thesis in um college and my thesis was on the Kashmir region of India and Pakistan and I was like why did I do a thesis on this like where am I going to get a job I had never even thought a CIA even a day before then but it was the only place I could think of to apply so that night I applied to the CIA and then the rest is history how did you I mean did you see him in a recruiting event or anything nothing I seriously was like like the next day I had to defend my thesis so I had all my notes and like I don't really like to prepare for things as you probably learned in the last day here um so I was just kind of like not wanting to get things ready for the next day and so my brain was wandering off and then I was like what am I going to do for a job job and then I was like who works cashmir and the only thing I could think was the CIA so I went online and plied that night um and yeah that's how my life works that's how I live my whole life so don't be surprised by this this wasn't just cuz I was in my 20s how long did it take him to get back with you uh my first interview was um the first week of December it was super quick oh okay yep so five weeks yeah you know it's funny I get people asking me all the time online how do I get in there how do I get into the CIA and it's it's like well did you look at the employment section on the website that might be a good start they all think it's like everybody gets recruited you got to put an application in did you did you put the application in online no they have a website they do have a website and it's priven it works you might not work that well over there if you haven't figured that out yet but but anyway so we have I would like to talk about 2008 mhm in Mumbai so we're talking about some drone strikes that happened can you go into some of that stuff at your first that was your first station correct no so I was actually at headquarters when Mumbai happened oh okay so I had gone overseas at that point I had been to Pakistan but I was actually home in the states when Mumbai happened um and you know this is mentioned briefly in my book and that's why it comes up so when Mumbai happened it was really interesting as you can imagine imagine um Congress reaches out to the CIA and they say what are you going to do about this big event you know hold on hold on let's go back y let's what was the event in Mumbai so Mumbai there was there was like um a terrorist attack by lashari TBA that's a Pakistani based terrorist group um they did it at a few different locations um in Mumbai which is you know like the second largest city in India and they did at like a hotel and you know it killed a very large number of people and so as you can imagine the CIA at the time had a lot of stuff going on in Pakistan since that was the focus of the global war on terror at the time and so there was a lot of pressure then going back on CIA like hey what are you going to do about these attackers because the Indians are saying it all emanated from Pakistan and you know you're in Pakistan and that's your focus and um you know what are you going to do going forward on this so I was on the team that covered um I think I was the actually only person on that that terrorist group at the time I mean the Pakistani terrorist groups just don't get a lot of focus um why is that I don't know I think it's because they don't all do things with Al-Qaeda okay so if they then eventually join up with Al-Qaeda so there is a really famous one named ilas Kashmir and he I mean he was a bad guy equally bad his whole career but then at one point he said I'm going to start doing my attacks with Al-Qaeda then he became a talk Target and then I don't think even lived a year you know because he then moved over to that realm and Al-Qaeda is was our Focus okay you know it's like Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda you know maybe TTP maybe talipan and then the Pakistani Terror groups were not even on the list okay yeah so they they just weren't prioritized at all um so what happened is Congress then came to CIA and said do something about it and um in my shop my boss had decided to actually um just choose a random terrorist camp and say it was lash taiba and have his carot a drone strike on it so what she did so the one negative is and this is what I don't like when stuff gets released like out into the public and there's redactions and then they assume it stuff right there's a lot of garbage that comes in the ca as you can imagine so we get a lot of reports on locations and it's not the right group and then we run it down and we find out the right group so there there was garbage reporting that they were at at that place but they never were right we we ran it down and we weren't but what she wanted me to do is write up a report with the garbage reporting to justify the strike on the location so I refused to and then I said I'll write up a report so I wrote a whole report on why every piece of that information was wrong that they'd ever use that location and I submitted it to her um so I submitted to like on a Friday so the next week I went to a week of training so you know most CA training is offsite so I was offsite in a different part of town um and it was the end of that next week and and and I get I go out to my phone we don't have phones in the office and I have a message and it's like you need to you need to see what's being sent around and I go and she went to another person on her team she actually went to DOD detaily because she thought she could get the Department of Defense person to live because the CIA person pushed back on her unfortunately and she wrote it up um for a a a nomination to do a strike on the location knowing all the facts were wrong CU I had already sent out a week before to the team and so it then I think I saw it Thursday night so Friday morning I sent it to all the leaders I was in the um counter terrorism Center and so I sent it to all the leaders across our four branches and then the two bosses above them and luckily my senior boss who he's pretty famous he was like the main analy boss um on Osama Bin Laden raid so he's like in the movie and stuff for um Zero Dark 30 he luckily said okay I'm going to sign someone to investigate this and so he luckily investigated it and then they shot it down and they didn't do the strike so so that was really good what was really bad though is I went I didn't go high enough and I learned that at that point so I complained to my bosses they did the right thing which you want them to do but I never like gave it to the IG or anything and like maybe a couple years later I found out she was one of our bosses in our Yemen drone shop right I mean that's very dangerous I mean she was willing to lie about a location in Pakistan to appease like a congress person asking us to do something um you know and unfortunately if if you don't say something about those people they get promoted up I mean that's a big problem in the government anywhere you've seen there was a ton of drone strikes in Yemen yeah interesting yeah and you have to like nominate those you kind of don't just come in like let's hit this location today so so that's what we were doing at that time right we were giving the nomination to then approve it so then the CIA would do it makes you wonder how many of those drone strikes were legit oh yeah I have a lot of questions about Yemen at least under her watch yeah no kidding how long was she in Yemen doing that for I mean usually rotate for two or three years to a job at CIA so what what is the point of what does she get out of this I mean I me so she makes what Congress happy what I know what is the point I I honestly didn't understand the point of it I mean I guess she did get a promotion was that the point yeah but she was in CA long enough to where she was going to get a promotion anyway I know this sounds depressing but you know in the government you you go to a point they move you to the next level unfortunately even if you're good or not um so yeah I I really don't get it um I feel like every time though I've seen somebody do the wrong thing there's not a logical reason right because a normal person wouldn't do that right it's like an irrational actor like how do you how do you get to the level cuz you wouldn't have thought of doing it I mean maybe it's just a thought well they're terrorists anyway yeah um but you know there's still there's still laws right I mean we still need to have some sort of justification obviously how how many how many times do you think that was going on just in luckily I don't think it happened a lot in Pakistan cuz I right a lot of things were nominated out of my office and there was really good people there um you know who did the right thing but you know it did make me nervous she decided to go to the dod person because the dod does a lot of drone strikes and it's like it's odd she picked we had a big team like 12 14 people I'm like it's odd she picked the one Department of Defense person that she thought would put it out um that made me concerned yeah picking on the uh well most Junior vulnerable and does that mean like yeah cuz DOD does it yeah man it's uh you know we're kind of talking about it off camera But as time goes on I am just with the stuff that comes out and the stuff that I learned doing this show is it's alarming man I just I don't talk much about money or the economy let's face it ignoring it doesn't help either because I believe the government screws up all the time I think they let down veterans ship jobs overseas they help their rich friends make even more money it is insane do you really think they care about helping us out with our money I don't think so that's one of the reasons why a lot of folks are stepping away from the government run systems and starting to diversify their money into real assets like gold and silver if you're concerned about your finances and the future of your finances like I am there's a damn good play you can make check out gold Co gold Co will hook you up with with a free 2023 gold Ira kit this kit will teach you how to help Safeguard your savings with 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that company is pure talk our veterans gave everything to protect our nation and Pure Talk understands the sacrifices they've made they've set an ambitious goal to eliminate $10 million in military debt by Veterans Day but they can't do it loan they need our help when you switch to Pure talks Lightning Fast 5G Network they'll donate a portion of every new order to this noble cause you can make a real difference just by choosing Superior cell phone service and pure talks plan started just 20 bucks a month offering unlimited talk text more data and a mobile hotspot just go to Pur talk.com slan and make the switch let's rally together and show our unwavering support to our our veterans visit Pur talk.com ran and switch to Pur talk today it's the right move and it's the American way there's so much to dive into and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for what what we've been doing but um yeah I mean the thing is you always have to have good people that step up and do the right thing and if you don't have those people then no one's ever going to do it you know and that's that's a really big problem in the government and then those people get into these awkward situations right like I was in a really tough spot after that like she was going to um write me up um she actually did a lot of things against me she canceled like um a TDY I had to a war zone which made me look really bad um even the write up she started the write up for me and then I ended up getting like a um like a positive review from the president's briefer on something I said and she said oh I can't do it now because you got this review but yeah it actually affected my career for a short time because she was then using it against me um you know for the next probably year or so and then finally I got out from from her office but um that's the thing in the CIA a lot of people don't understand is there's not really a human resources department you the only person who can guide your career is your current boss and that's it so they're the one who helps you get to another job so they tell that person yeah take her she's great and they help promote you or they say don't take her they help you get into the training courses you need or they say don't let her into that training course um and so it's all those personalities can really affect your career as you can imagine you can get really held back for things yeah let's talk about Pakistan when you were informed of the coast bombing in December 2009 Kent Chapman attack was a double a su double agent suicide bomber seven CIA Personnel killed I had friends killed in that yeah I know you too do you know do you know a lot about what went on there yeah I mean the crazy part is is well the day I found out that you first bringing up I um I was in another city in Pakistan and I flew in and I just W came into the office so I knew nothing right cuz it's not like we share things as you know over your cell phones when you're um in the CIA so I go into the office and my boss calls me in and um and I was like oh gosh I'm in TR I was always getting in trouble for going over his head on something so I'm like what did I do well I was down for a week like so he calls me in and and and I'm like oh gosh like getting ready to defend myself and he's like hey just you know and then he told me it happened so the thing was is they'd been planning that for a while and it was actually supposed to be in P shower it was the asset who chose to move it to Coast which obviously already is a warning sign right so so if you think about it it was actually people make and Pakistan planning it the entire time and then the last minute it shifted over to Afghanistan and then the like the Afghanistan CIA Personnel got involved so they even ended it they joined at kind of the end of the whole planning right so it was going to be in Pakistan and it moved so yeah basically what happened it was a ruse it was um Al-Qaeda and TTP which you know a lot of people ignore TTP um even this last year it's been so powerful it's always been an ally with Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda uses them and join attacks and people kind of like ignore that fact so the the two groups got together and said hey we're going to make this ruse we're going to do a double agent um and end up being a double Jordanian agent who then the jordanians gave to the CIA so he's kind of like a triple agent and um you know we're going to use him we're going to basically tell them he's a doctor that is doing something for Ziri and is going to go KN to see zhi so so Dr Ian aliri was the head of al-Qaeda at the time so as you can imagine well he was a deputy sorry Deputy so you can imagine this is the number two most important terrorist in the CIA and now we got an agent that basically says oh I'm a doctor that has to go see him for a medical in you know thing so it was a huge deal it was probably the biggest operation of the time in the CIA and then unfortunately the whole plan was for him to commit a suicide attack against the CIA during his meeting and that's what he did and that's how we lost the seven officers but you know it's something to keep in mind though a lot of people lose sight of the fact that Ziri is an operational planner he gets sold all the time as like oh he was like a doctor and he's like a religious scholar that guy was involved in planning 911 he was involved in planning Coast he led Benghazi and he gets ignored all the time and to be honest until I see a Ka of eulogize him I'm having a hard time believing he's dead because he does rses he plays games he knows how to mess with us and he's dangerous yeah so where is he do you think so well supposedly last summer we killed him in a drone strike in Cobble so um what what seems to have happened is and all this really kind of lines up so he was staying at a house owned by sjin hak and sarajen hakani and the hakan have long been suspected of probably being the people who host zarir the whole time using was zeran as you can imagine because they had such a power base there so anyway he he he goes to cble report Le and he's in this house of hakan and then yeah the CIA Struck it and he was killed then but now it's been what 14 months and Al-Qaeda has yet to eulogize him officially interesting interesting thing where do you think he might be I don't know I think he's still likely dead I just it's very odd that they haven't eulogized him and they also never fake eulogize people so so I so I'm just kind of like well I don't think a fake one's going to come out but why isn't the real one come up well how long does it usually take for him to eulogize somebody I mean they usually do it before they name the next leader I mean they have not publicly named who the next leader is even though they've chosen who the like de facto leader is but the weird part is the leader is also like this strange defacto so it's like ccial a but they're like Well he kind of leads like the military side of al-Qaeda and then Bin Laden's son is still alive so so the US reported him being killed in 2019 so Hamza Bin Laden the a to Osama Bin Laden is alive in Afghanistan too but he doesn't want to be the leader of alq so it's unclear what role he's playing so yeah so Al-Qaeda hasn't actually made clear like this is our air which is interesting so hold on we reported Bin Laden's son was killed in 2019 correct when did we or you find out that he was still alive um last September his brother came to um Afghanistan to visit him how do you know that because his brother came to Afghanistan to visit him gotcha all right I'll stop asking [Laughter] questions we'll have that conversation off camera um now I got to re hold on now I got to just readjust my thoughts cuz I would love to dive into that but let's go to let's go to January 2010 led the capture of Mula Abdul gani berer did I say that correct yes so I mean um again um you know if you've seen my book this is known um Mula berer as everyone now knows he basically made the whole peace deal that turned Afghanistan over to the Taliban so back in 2009 I started targeting him um and we captured him in 2018 the really interesting part is he had really good Ops SEC um to where like I wanted to capture him but I was like I don't think like even if he got on a phone he was on it like a minute you know and I even had a senior boss of the Deputy Chief of station one time like stopped me in one of our big meetings that we had weekly and he said Sarah why are you still briefing this you're never going to get muler berer on a phone like he said that in front of the whole station right right and it's like it's like I knew I probably wouldn't and as you know how life is so it's funny the um you know the the people who collect signals intelligence even the guy that was supposed to do it for us did not believe my phones were braiders and he actually like was refusing to collect on them and then a Myer of all people from the bin Laden raid like stepped in and was like you need to collect I don't give a damn what you think we're the CIA she was really funny and she defended me um but I don't think he actually CL it so so how it works in the CIA is you always do side things so I had someone in another location collecting the phones for me so I was in another city in Pakistan and coming back to Islamabad and that person calls me and she said you won't believe it braer phone is up but it's been up like your whole flight and I said that doesn't make any sense she's like yeah it hasn't turned off and I said how weird and I said keep me in the loop I'm going to see if we can get a capture going and so um I went to the leaders in um Islamabad and um the crazy part was is did you ever hear about like the cosos conference I didn't okay there's this time of the year I don't I hopefully the time changes every year um that they all get together and have a big meeting so we had no leaders um our top three were gone and then the the the leader the the chief of Base from where he was located was gone um so I so the only boss there was our chief of liaison at the time you know and so I went and said hey I need to get a team to go capture braer he's like let me think about it and I was like oh my gosh so I didn't even go back and ask him so I went down to where the team sit and I said hey I need two guys to go to Karachi and they said yeah we got like two in La horor we'll move them from that and then um and then I booked a flight and I went straight down there and then um so I I'm traveling right and I'm checking in with this girl and she's like the phone is still on and I was like no way well at first we assumed he lived in Karachi which he ended up doing and that's where I capture was but the phone's in queta so I said okay let's just capture him in qua if the phone's up in qua why would we wait till he comes to karach so I called the boss in queta and did you ever see like Gone in 60 Seconds and there he had Eleanor uhhuh so like it was the car he never could get and and something always went wrong with it so our boss in queta had a had a terrorist like that he was like a like a deputy Shadow governor for helmond he was like the shadow governor for a really famous Taliban Commander named Mula Naim B um I think his name was like tersha and he was in town that day and this guy tried to get tah hershaw every time he was in town we probably should do like see how much money we've wasted on capturing this guy because we failed every time so of course we I call him he's like tar Shaw's in town and I said dude I'm saying berater and he's like I don't think it's berer he's like I'm going to go for tah sha and then I'll go for berer if we don't get sha so they spent the half first half of the day going for the guy he's never been able to get and they didn't get him and then braer moves so then um you know my friend's like he's driving he's going home to Karachi and I'm like yes so at this time I've already decided I said this is his kid there's no way berer rode to another city with his phone and rode back so I said his kid has a phone now we can only capture him at home cuz you know you you don't want to pick some kid up at like a restaurant or something so we waited till the phone went back and then it went back to the exact neighborhood we thought he lived in and then we um we we did the capture operation so we just got really lucky his kids stole old phone out of the closet and brought on a trip with his dad and this is the this is the co-founder of the Taliban yeah he he was number two at the time of the Taliban yeah but he is one of the founders yeah how old was he maybe 55 it's really hard to tell yeah um but I he SP about 55 so how long what is the what is the process like when you want to do a strike or a capture well luckily because he was number two of the Taliban we had approvals to capture him so we'd already gone to lawyers and got like the top 10 of Taliban so that's who we had at the time we had a list of 10 Taliban people we were allowed to capture so I didn't have to go ask any permissions to capture him so then usually you go to your cosos and um get approval when my cosos was gone cosos is Chief station that will be the head agency officer in charge of the entire country oh yeah so I would you would I would go to him especially at a that that high of a capture and ask his permission but he wasn't there and the number two wasn't there and number three wasn't there and number four wasn't going to give me an answer so then I just went straight to where berer lived and then that Co was gone and she was replaced by like a friend of mine and so he's like let's do it um so yeah so we really got no approvals because nobody was in country um so yeah that's how we got Brier how how long does it normally take let's say they're not on the top 10 list oh if they're not on the top 10 list you actually have to go to the CIA lawyers and get approvals and that could take months months if you know if you've never got approval to go after a guy yeah what are the most what are your Str usually are they captures are they drone strikes are they send it in teams what depends on what you're working so I was working Taliban so we didn't really have lethal approvals on Taliban maybe we had amula Omar so we had to capture Taliban because remember the government still called them a political group they weren't a terrorist organization so we weren't really allowed to put Taliban like under drone strike but we really couldn't anyway they were in qua Karachi Pasha you know it wasn't like they in weran yeah Al-Qaeda most of those targets obviously the the the attempt was drone strikes because of the locations of the country they were in but if they're in the settle areas obviously like a wh or something you'd have to capture them okay so when you're so as a targeter you're attached to a certain group correct okay or it can independ so you can be attached to a group you can be attached to a region you can be attached to a city so at that time I was my job was the top three of the Taliban and then anything in karach so it could be Al-Qaeda could be Shia groups it didn't matter it could be organized crime so I did any targeting karach okay what's it feel like when you get these guys it was pretty exciting the interesting part was though no one believed I really got him so so we got his photo and of course they sent it first to a CIA asset that I always said was correct CP um over in Afghanistan he didn't ID the photo so everyone's like it's not him I said no it's him that source is crap and you need to finally fire him and then we finally got it into sources that did actually know him and weren't feeding us garbage CU as you know a lot of sources in Afghan Dan fet is a bunch of garbage got paid for it and then they worked for three other intelligence agencies so so yeah I mean it it was good to get him um in retrospect though I realized right away that they wanted him for I wanted to get him cuz he was number two the Taliban and he was the lead operational commander of the Taliban so in my head he's the lead Ops guy so every US soldier dying in Afghanistan it's on his shoulders right that's the way I viewed him as a Target when we got him in a room and we started getting questions from what the CIA wanted from him that's when I actually learned that the president at the time President Obama um had appointed like the special Envoy and his name is Richard Holbrook and his goal was to do Taliban reconciliation um and their main focus and they had made some assessment that the only way they could reconcile with with the Taliban was to use Mula berer so so we sit down with him and want to collect info to go Target other Taliban members right because that's what I do I go after the bad guys and I find out all my questions are who would you be okay with coming to meet with you about peace like I mean we would list off names of countries would you be okay if Japan came the Brits came with all this strange stuff and I was like oh my gosh they only want this guy for reconciliation and that kind of became that's when I saw we're going to make a deal with the Taliban and we're going to give part of the government back to the Taliban I didn't think it was going to be what today was so if I went back in time I never would have captured him because he is the reason the whole country fell are you serious swear to God so this plan this goes way back oh yeah and they had the plan before I captured him like the day we captured him um like our chief brought us in the office in Islam B well we flew back up from Karachi and he brought me and then the other guy who are going to be the lead de briefers and he he gave us a heads up he said FYI he said this is the number one focus in the White House they want to bring out this whole Brook guy um they want to take it over from Islamabad station they don't even want you guys to briefing him um so he fought for us to debrief him but they pulled everything they sent a psychiatrist out to watch our sessions to make sure we had rapport with him I kid you not they made sure his detain debriefers had rapport with him like they were already kissing his butt right after we caught him so yeah and so he ended up um getting released and then he was the key us um intermediary with the Taliban to make the peace deal and I tell you this guy I mean I really liked most terorists I met I know that sounds really bad cuz you know when you're on a human to human level and you're just talking to him this guy was smart he was charismatic I mean he was probably a genius cuz he was locked up but he could remember he told you something like five days ago like he knew exactly when he told you stuff he could defend anything so if you said hey the Taliban did X he would give you a really good justification why and you'd be like oh yeah that actually makes sense or I see the logic um like one of the things is um right after the fall so the US went in after 911 and they beat the Taliban in like 5 weeks I mean it was amazing amazing like raw raw USA I mean they really kicked ass they toppled the Taliban so Taliban basically all went home so um Mula braer in my theory first took Mula Omar and he hit him so he hit him in a ruse gun and mul om I don't think ever left there braer went home to like the home is Dad owns and and they were like we lost we're done well as you know Bin Laden crossed Tora into Pakistan so our war now on Al-Qaeda was kind of over and it was like oh gosh we moved this whole war machine to Afghanistan we beat the Taliban and baden's gone what are we going to do so they decided we're going to go Target the old Taliban leaders even though that we just beat the Taliban so they made a hit list of the senior Taliban leaders and then they came and bomb ber Raider's house so at that point he said screw this I'm going on offense like you beat us and then you come back here months later and you bom my house and they actually injured his dad so that didn't help um and then that's when he triggered over and said okay game's on tal Ban's back like you didn't win and that's when he went full back in no kidding right so when you tell he tells you that story I'm like heck yeah you come and bom my dad I'm in um so so yeah he he would always have like a good story like that so I can see how he would meet with us policy makers and be very persuasive um especially remember they didn't view the Taliban as terrorist group they still view them as a political group even though they like kidnap people murder people torture people they rape women they rape children like they still call them a political organization blow I mean we're funding them again now right I think we send like $40 million a week $40 million a week goes to Taliban yes who are taking our allies lining them up like dogs yep and shooting them in the back of the head and we're funding that and that's kind of what you hope they do I mean I've got videos that are very very painful deaths what kind of deaths torture deaths some really bad um beheading deaths of our allies you know these are all the guys we used to work with over there yeah a lot of a lot of the people who worked with them get the video sent to them a during or after it's a taunt they were taunting when the airport was still open like um you know when people were trying to get in the airport as refugees remember the US military they were there but they couldn't respond in any way to the situation going on so to taunt them the Taliban would grab a woman and shoot her in the head they would burn a a Child Alive in front of the military because they knew they couldn't act yeah you know I I uh interviewed do you know Tyler Vargas Andrews by chance we haven't met in person but I'm in the moral compass Federation and he's in the Federation with us oh man what a what an amazing human being he is but um yeah he was describing some of the stuff that he saw and then you know I had I worked over there for a long time too and uh we probably ran into each other without knowing it but I had people sended me videos and and cell phone clips of what they were doing and I wish I could post it on here you know and I wish I could embed it into this interview just to show people what's happening over there what is it what does it look like to see a infant burned alive to taunt what does it look like to see the people that you used to work with lined up in the mud and just shot in the back of the head just going down the line you know they don't put that on the news these people need to see that yeah they don't put on the news and they also didn't give any help to these poor people who had to stand there and watch that you know our servicemen like the trauma they had to stand there and watch and endure they actually came back here and you know a lot of them were told we don't want to hear you talk about Afghanistan yep yep yeah it's well you know it's funny you bring it up because we were just talking we're were talking about India and you know that the bomber that Tyler had his eyes on was captured in India did he I did not know that yeah so so in 2017 um Isis deployed him to do attack in New Deli India and he went over there with the ruse of being like an engineer student and like started college and then he was casing a few locations like the New Delhi airport like the mall and um the Indians or the CIA I was CIA at the time one of them infiltrated the network of Isis he was in and found out who he was and they did a capture of him in India um and then they sent him to Bam so he was in Bam from 2017 until July 1st When We snuck out in the middle of the night July 1st um 2021 we left in the middle of the night didn't tell the commander of BM we were leaving he comes in the morning and the Taliban and terrorists are breaking all the prisoners out that's when he got to prison so we had him in custody for all those years um and the crazy part is is I found out who the bomber was even before it was in the Press because my guy who gives me Isis stuff for Libya sent me the photo in like the middle of the night and I get a photo from him and it's got a little bit of Eric I mean Arab um text and then he wrote in Arabic something so I get up and I translate it and I've honestly had not slept in a week at that point cuz I just got people into the Cobble airport and I was like oh gosh but it's Libya you know like I thought it was a Libyan terrorist and so I was all getting up for it and it said you know this man's important you need to look into him and so I transer translate the name on the picture and it says lari and so I write back back why are you sending me an Afghan it's like it's still not even Dawning on me that he's sending me somebody to do with the attacks right and so he he writes back again look at him and I was like I have no idea what you're talking about and so I try searching the name and I'm not getting anything on the name and it Dawns on me and I said was he involved in the Cobble airport attack and he said yeah I didn't know he was a suicide bomber at that second I thought maybe he was the planner um cuz usually you don't know the bomber they just take some low-level guy and you know know and so yeah but that's how I found out and then maybe within the next day it hit the Press um who he was but yeah so damn it's crazy damn well what do you want to talk about first do you want to talk about I I want to go into the Afghan withdrawal go anything you want to I want to go into Benghazi I'll drink some water Let's uh let's take a quick break okay when we come back I think we'll pick up since we're on the subject let's go into the withdrawal ladies and gentlemen it has been a minute since I've done a Bub's Naturals commercial but it has not been a minute since I've taken the best of my entire life actually just knocked one out this 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company they are just solid people with a solid product and they just want everybody to experience the best of your life go to bubs naturals.com use the promo code Sean for 20% off and let's get it going all right Sarah we're back from the break we're getting ready to dive into the Afghan withdraw I've covered this with Scott man before who I know you know Scott covered it with Tyler Andrew Vargas uh or I'm sorry Tyler Vargas Andrews but um I'd love to hear I'm really interested in getting all the dirt on this so anything you have to add uh on top of everything we've already covered I want to hear it the chaotic and deadly us evacuation from Afghanistan stunned Americans and the world and cost the lives of 13 US soldiers now a damning new report blames the Biden Administration for being slow to evacuate US citizens and Afghan allies you know I think one of the things I could add on top of what they've covered um is the fact that it always gets lost that this was State Department run right the really interesting part is right do you hear anybody ever say we need to hold State Department accountable for the horrible Neo right or even military is like hey we were just following the state Neo rules um and then you know being CIA and all you know even towards the end of the withdrawal they took over the cia's gate so the CIA was probably the only real government organization moving people out taking our allies out making it happen and doing the right thing and state department took over their gate because they didn't like what they were doing and that they were bringing people in and so even when I finally got a family to that gate after the um the suicide bombing it was a state department person running the CIA gate no kidding yeah so they were like basically preventing the CIA from bringing their own people in why do you think we didn't want to save our own people I think we as CIA wanted to save our own people I think the government just wanted to get out of Afghanistan and actually thought they were going to get away with it I think they just wanted to leave and be done they never expected 20 years of veterans or or Intel officers that worked in the country or even just NOS who had supported the country were going to go back in and save their allies like we got in their way like in a bad way um and that's kind of what ruined their narrative right because they were going to say hey we left 100 Americans behind but now you had all these volunteer groups with large lists of people able to tally up their Americans and say hey we went across all the groups and it looks like 8,000 Americans are left behind US Government how are you getting away with saying we only left 100 Americans behind so it was actually the volunteers who at least told the truth and held the government to account but of course the government's not dumb you know what they did they made like a coalition to kind of get the other people to be quiet you know so task force pineapple that Scott was from was one of the louder ones obviously talking about the issues and so they wanted to diffuse that and they created this thing called Afghan Evac I don't know if you've ever heard of it I haven't so it was basically going to be it is uh partnership between the government and all these NOS of course not all of us are a part of it and um moral compass Federation is kind of like the Rogue entity to the side if I'm in something it's like the Rogue entity to the side just FYI because it's like hey we don't want to play with this game like Afghan Evas kind of just talks what state department wants on the talk and it keeps people quiet you have to sign tons of ndas when I first joined in I think after the third NDA I was like what the f I'm out of this group um but yeah it is to keep the volunteer groups in line to to to make them mentally happy so it's a cover yeah as they drag out the Evac it is a cover to drag out the Evac 100% and all these groups just fall in line with it and even two years later at first I thought oh I hope they they know that they're being played but yeah two years later they they still do their monthly meetings and um people still talk about it like it's really saving people can you go over some of the like what's happening there now you still have a really good footprint in in Afghanistan as far as what what's happening yeah and so you know I've talked to some of the Northern Alliance guys um and they're talking you know I had always had a feeling that China played a role in this a lot of people think I'm crazy but we have the green energy thing right everybody's moving this Administration is really pushing green energy well green energy comes from China it's not energy Independence China was there in Afghanistan the minute we pulled out I know you know a little bit about this very rich lithium mines in Afghanistan lithium is what we need to make the batteries that power the green energy China's taking in I mean I mean anybody can kind of piece this together and they go oh well maybe there's something to that do you think there's anything to that well yeah I mean I really hope people have known this the entire time because it would blow my mind if people negotiated with the Taliban didn't know this but in 2009 Mula berer who again is the person who um negotiated the peace deal his job for the Taliban was he was the liaison from the Taliban to the government of China and he would go to China and meet with the Chinese government um you know at the time it was obviously as you can imagine just keeping a relationship going um the Chinese really wanted hey Taliban if you collect any info on the yugar you know on the weers um pass it to us so it's really interesting people don't realize that the Taliban are reporting on other Muslims to China you know um so so everyone acting like oh yeah they're going to be some Big C terrorism Force um the people of China are doing abuses against the talian have been supporting that for a very very long time besides what they're doing in their own country um and then Taliban of course would ask for stuff like help us um get weapons or or funds for weapons so it was that kind of relationship but the the Taliban China relationship has been stronger than the US Taliban relationship at least since 2009 for sure so of course the China would be the main um party they link up with when they go to and China now I think is the first and only country that has um assigned an official ambassador to the Taliban government they're the first ones I think they're the first ones yeah are they the only ones th far yeah everyone else has these weird envoys but I believe that's the first designated ambassadorial position I was talking to these Northern Alliance guys and they were saying there are Chinese officials everywhere over there building massive hotels right outside of these lithium deposits I mean like huge multi-million dollar structures which you don't see those very often over there in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan yeah I mean and it's smart of them I mean obviously it goes along with their Belt Road initiative like I said they already had they don't have to go make a relationship right the guy they brokered with now I don't know what he is now like number three in the government but he also plays a huge part in the economics piece of this current government anyway so he's already positioned anyway to um hook China up which was his closest Ally before he was captured can you talk a little bit about the Northern Alliance and what's going on with them right now yeah I mean I can talk a little bit about the Northern Alliance the the thing is obviously as you know there's pockets of resistance right the Northern Alliance is the most famous because obviously that goes back to akmad Sham mud um and he was the key us Ally before 9/11 the really interesting thing is and we talk about in our book is you know he was assassinated of course well the individual Who provided the two Tunisian suicide bombers to him provided attackers to zahiri for the magazi attacks too right the guy still in play and I like to try to tell people this is still all connected right I mean I know massud son comes up as a connection it's like no even the same terrorists are still in the circle as when akan sha massud was in power and I feel the nor the the northern resistance is trying to tell that to people right like these are still the same attack attackers we're here fighting International terrorists there's a lot of misinformation in the US that what's happening in Afghanistan is like a um domestic war or tribal war and it's like no those are foreign terrorists they're they're fighting Al-Qaeda at this point so many terrorists are pouring in to Afghanistan as well and the really interesting part is alqaeda has adopted uh like adapted I mean so they learned something I think from Benghazi so when alaa went into Libya after Gaddafi they decided hey it's better for us to take the local commanders and make them the al-Qaeda leaders instead of bringing in a foreigner cuz you know like you bring in an Egyptian into Benghazi it doesn't always go well right cuz locals like oh Egyptians so they decided we're going to appoint the local so that now Al-Qaeda is doing that in Afghanistan so for each province that Al-Qaeda is making commanders for the lot of them they're taking Taliban members and making them the al-Qaeda Commander so the two things that works for the um Al-Qaeda right the US will just say they're Taliban when they're Al-Qaeda and they already have the support because they're the Taliban right so you're not bringing in some outside force and being like follow me I'm Al-Qaeda you're saying hey you're already following the Taliban guy he now works for Al-Qaeda and that's what they did in Benghazi and the two that they chose in Benghazi they were involved in our attacks and like I said they're doing it in Afghanistan now but like for every Province right so it's like aund bazis it almost feels like man they're smart they are it's it's it's genius because there's always been a little ruffling especially you bring in Egyptians is always the best example and then you know there's a little head butting man can you can you talk a little bit about what the resistance is who it is who they're fighting I mean just more of a snapshot of what's going on over there yeah I mean I'm not an expert on the resistance there's there's different Pockets so there's the tajiks right and that's kind of the ones we all know the the Northern Alliance and then there's kind of like the sedat you know Sami Sadat there's the ones who were basically kind of maybe their special forces in their military or in like the ministry of defense of the real Afghan government and they have like a resistance and pockets of resistance and different leaders right and a lot of them are a pume but they don't have to be right but um so so there's so as we go along right all these different pockets are going to need to go under an umbrella they're going to need to unite exactly and um because that's what the terrorists do right I mean even if you look over in Afghan um Pakistan I don't know if you remember when TTP was formed but the only purpose of forming TTP was to make the terrorist Stronger by putting them all together so they took like by Tula mud's group abdulla massud gahad and fure muhammads and they said okay you all go under this structure so they did it so al-qaeda's like that's genius and Bin Laden said I want to start doing that I want to do it in Libya um he didn't do it when he wanted to do but anal asaria Benghazi started doing it and then later on they followed Bin Laden's plan and they actually made another organization that did follow Bin Laden's plan and reped to Al-Qaeda but when anelar Shar Benghazi was set up and that was when the attackers in our group they said any group you can join us and so I think this confuses a lot of people so like there'll be a guy at our attacks he's anel Shari Benghazi and he's aqim cuz it's an umbrella organization you can beat any terrorist group under the ansaria banner and um AA is getting really smart about that they're actually having meetings with International terrorists to discuss how can we make more of these umbrella organizations and wrap us under it um even the hakan are involved in those discussions one of our terrorists that we found recently that that had been in gitmo he's still in Libya he's having those discussions with the hakan about hey how do we view all of this together right don't make it Afghanistan don't make it Libya make this a global terrorism front like those conversations are happening wow and the thing is they wanted to do this in Libya and they failed so Libya was supposed to become where all the training camps were and then they would deploy all the terrorist out from those training camps to all the future jihads first it was Syria but then wherever it would become so they've now shifted that to Afghanistan so Afghanistan now they're going to put I I don't know what the exact thing is but basically at least one training camp in each province and so they're going to train all the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan and then they're going to deploy them from Afghanistan to the different groups and the really interesting part is the terrorist who moved all of our attackers that left our attacks out of Libya after the attacks he's sitting in Cobble so basically al-qaeda's best terrorist facilitator is in Cobble because that's their plan wow why why do you think so many foreign terrorists are are converging in on Afghanistan because it's safe because we're not there yeah so even one of our most recent ones I'm assuming he's he's a hive value Target in Libya he was a very high Target value when we're in Pakistan he now goes to Afghanistan there's no more drone strikes um he can live a lot safer so so of course they're going to move there and remember that's now where the training camp infrastructure is going to be and they want to support that do you think China is going to Aid them in future attacks on us I think they're for sure going to going to turn a blind eye I think they're going to ride this for as long as they can I don't think China's stupid I'm not sure China thinks taliban's going to be ruling 10 years from now but I think China's like let's position ourselves for whatever that fallout's going to look like I think that's more what China's thinking do you think China's going to be rolling over there in 10 years I'm not entirely sure they already are it sounds like you know but so man it's so what is what is taliban's relationship with the US now are we according to an oped in the Washington Post today the CIA shares intelligence with the Taliban so we have an official intelligence sharing relationship with the Taliban I I just I just I can't believe it doesn't even seem real does it I I I can barely take it every single day especially with just how many al-qaida members are currently in Afghanistan the thing is we know Benghazi was covered up that Al-Qaeda led the attack right people shouldn't have allowed it to happen they did now should we have learned our lesson like we cannot let the US government cover up Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan I'm I'm sorry I feel like people are like we've done this for 20 years no like we're going to say something we're going to report it if you don't or if the Press doesn't like I do think people need to step up now that we have so many experts on Afghanistan we have so many allies in Afghanistan we can pull out all the information ourselves if the government's not going to do the right thing then everybody who has contacts in Afghanistan needs to be putting the information out where do you think so they they're doing all this training and stuff in Afghanistan Al-Qaeda and all these International terrorists you think they're going to start coming up through our Southern borders oh they've already started do you know that for a fact yes how do you know that I know that because I was told several different times about group pockets of Terrace so like six eight um there was one larger one maybe 25 to 50 I think it was 50 um that procured v um passports from the Afghan government with the sole purpose of coming to our Southern border um one was Isis it was only a group of eight the Isis terrorists got the passports they went to Iran their goal was Iran turkey turkey Brazilian visa and then come up through the Darian pass um the I forget it was 25 or 50 sorry that was hakani Network their goal was they obviously the hakani network they run the minist of interior so they all got the passports um their goal was Turkey to Brazil I mean the key is Brazil um and then Al-Qaeda has also sent um attackers on the same routes and why is brazila key because it's easy to get a humanitarian Brazil visa and then there's no real security to stop you from leaving so then you just now go illegally up through the Darion pass okay the Darion pass is the focus the Darion pass is where they're all going through the Darian pass is your choke point where is that it's kind of like in Panama okay and um it's super dangerous like if 10 Afghans go in maybe six come out really why is that um there is murders rapes robberies animal attacks like I seriously know someone who told me that the Afghan died by like a a large wild cat you know like a cougar or whatever is the local one there um so yeah diseases um even if they get through and then get picked up by the panamanians there's a lot of torture and abuse so what hold on what is why is it so dangerous there this is a section of Panama I think cuz so many criminals maybe are going through it it's just of it's just extreme poverty I think it's just like it's the jungle right it's like kind of a real wild wild west um and and that's so that's where everybody's targeting to travel through so it's not exactly Brazil Brazil is just the easiest part to get through this pipeline up gotcha yeah it's it's the easiest country to infiltrate Brazil is for for the beginning of their Journey how many terrorists do you know how approximately how many terrorists we've caught trying to cross the southern border I wouldn't imagine it's very many it seems like the southern border is pretty wide open I don't know cuz like last year I thought there was like 20 in a month or something I feel like maybe in this year it was like 100 or so I don't know the exact number I know we're missing a lot yeah I mean that these are only who we've caught and I mean and who we have biometric for right because if we don't have their Biometrics in our system how do we know who they're ter we don't even know who they are and remember if they're coming as an Afghan on a fake Taliban passport it it doesn't have the Biometrics we had anyway it doesn't have the name we have watch listed it doesn't even probably of the ethnicity if you're Pakistani and you went and got a passport from the Taliban you're now they think assume you're an Afghan that's a good point have they have we interrogated anybody that they have caught crossing the border I mean I'm assuming I just don't have access to that but they are in detention facilities if that's what you're asking are you aware of any of the motivations I I just have not seen any debriefings and luckily I have not known an terrorist that's come over thank heavens okay all right all right well is there anything else that uh we want to cover when it comes to the Afghan withdrawal I think we're good unless you had something all right let's move into let's move into some more of your career you were involved in the first operational acts after the ubl raid capture of yonas Al morani yeah so so that was an interesting time cuz as you remember obviously they got Bin Laden and then they're like oh no the pakistanis might arrest all these Americans who are involved and they sent a ton of people home right and then Pakistan's like oh good we're going to stop issuing visas like I don't know why anyone nobody factored that in and then like oh shoot we don't have enough staff in Pakistan because now we can't get visas cuz Pakistan you know in retaliation sto issuing Visas so they went to the targeting community and said who still has visas and a long long time ago the pakistanis issued 10 year and then it went to 5ye and then it went just your trip so I had a fiveyear um there was one girl that was now like kind of part-time CA she married like a jck officer so she wasn't at headquarters anymore she had a ten year and then Maya who caught Bin Laden had a ten year the funny part is the three of us volunteered so they sent all those staff officers home from his llad and Maya who all of isi knew got Bin Laden she volunteered to go back to Pakistan so they're all whms right cuz she was like I'll go back so they didn't take her it was there unfortunately um she's a little bit of a tough character I like her but the boss the female boss didn't want to um have her come back so so me and the other two girl me and the other girl went so so I go out there and it is like a ghost town and they're doing nothing there's no work going on um and we get information that Unis morani so he was the alqaeda external operations Commander so he's now like KSM but like you know 10 guys died since right so he's not as smart as College Shake muhamad who did 911 he's kind of like the C team you know um so it's kind of like this is now who we got um so he was in charge of any external plotting for core alqaeda out of Pakistan and we got information that he was going to leave Pakistan to go to Africa and my assumptions maybe like Libya at the time just because of the year was 2011 um and then he was going to plan attacks in Europe from Africa it was him and his cell they were going to move out of Pakistan so we got this and I said oh good let's go ask Pakistan to detain them and everyone laughed at me you know they're like we don't do operations with Pakistan anymore I said well are we going to ask and they're like we don't we don't even talk so I go over to our chief of liaison at the time which every chief of liaison in my story is bad but they're not all bad but this is sorry sorry CIA so I go to chaison and I say hey can you call isi and see if we can go capture Unice real quick isi is the pakistani's version of CIA yeah inter Services intelligence um they have a bunch of different directorates the CIA works with like their counterterrorism directorates so that's who we're talking to when we talk to to them as a partner if that makes sense good um so I go over I said call isi so we can go capture Unice and he goes I don't talk to isi and I said but you're the chief of liaison your only job is liaison with isi and he goes yeah and I said can I have their number he's like I don't have their phone number he's like he goes I'm only here to play tennis and I thought I misheard that I seriously thought I misheard that so I said you don't have a number like you can't call them and he's like no and he honestly grabs a tennis racket and leaves the meeting the discussion with me with a tennis racket like he seriously went in the middle of the day to play tennis racket when I was asking him if we could go capture the external operations planner for alqaeda so anyway this is our US Government I could I couldn't I honestly this is how it is everybody needs to hear this yeah I everybody needs to hear play tennis um so I go back into the targeting shop and everyone's like how'd it go like kind of making fun of me and I said yeah the jerk doesn't even have ize number so I said but we do and we had this like old notebook in front of the phone and it never got changed like you probably need to go throw that notebook away and so I was like the phone number is in this notebook I know it because I've called from it and I went through the notebook and I found isi's phone number it's it's the isi the targeters talk to not like the isi the chief of station talks to but I don't care so I called it and the guy knew me and I'm like hey it's Sarah Adams I'm back in country we want to meet he's like come on over so so we we went over it was me and like another like a one of the permanent like targeters in the station cuz you know I was just a TD wire and we go over and um they have us go meet I guess in the room the chief of station goes to cuz it's never where I met before and it's like this big room with maps all over and it's really funny because we always printed maps for isi and I never know what we did with them and I go to them this is where all our Maps went I thought you were doing operations with them um so yeah so the room was all these maps and it was a a very senior isi guy who I assume was probably the head of the CT directorate again I never met at that director so I didn't know who he was and we we start the conversation and um I tell them about Unice and at the time he had like four or five terrorist traveling with him and then the guy you know he he listens and he's like you know we'd be interest interested but we're really upset about Bin Laden and he kind of goes through the Spiel and then he goes like hey if you handshake with me that you'll tell us if you're going to go get I an alari in Pakistan we'll do it and and so so yeah like cuz I just thought he would say you did this with him and lad and we're not going to do work with you that's what I think the whole conversation is going he asked for a handshake well luckily I'm not going to just handshake people like I'm not I'm just I'm not a liar right so luckily I knew we were nowhere near getting zahiri so I said hey I know we're not about to capture Z herei in Pakistan and said and I shook his hand which is so funny because I had no authority to shake his hand and he said okay and then we start planning for the operation it was one meeting with isi to get them to restart capture operations that was it man and you triggered it yeah and the in the US didn't even try it cuz all boys over there they're playing tennis yeah oh boy yeah that's a whole another issue but yeah so yeah we got Unice and then the funny part is we um it actually became a big thing because we we went over to start meeting to plan for Unice and then like press came out that like the head of al-qaed and karach who I knew really well cuz I used to be the Karachi targeter was captured so I go over I said hey this guy was captured he's like oh yeah he's here I said can we meet him he's like of course so we started debriefing al-qaeda's head of karach just because we luckily were meeting with isi again and he was in their building and then um so Unice and team go to Southern Pakistan and I kid you not their plan is to get on a boat I'm not saying a ship a boat to Africa so a couple of the guys are like you got to be kidding me like this plan is crazy and they Jet and they go back to where stand like they like ditch Unice and so all we have is that um some guy named Dow is going to move him around um this is this is a part I want to kind of explain why you always collect information so a guy named Dow is going to move him and so I said let's just pick a dow like we need a starting point in queta we we had no capture team because they stopped captured so we talk Cobble in descending like a person in their their tool and they came over like okay I'll be I'll be your capture team so we had a capture team from cell and um so we I said let's pick daba Denny so he was basically ksm's brother-in-law and he would just been released a few months ago I said hey we know he's in queta he's important enough to where he would facilitate him and I said I know I saw in the past during cia's debriefing program people mapped out his house so we dug it all up and found the house and then we went and asked the AQ guy that we're now randomly meeting hey did you know D did you ever go to his house he's like yeah I've been to his house we like does his family still live there because you know that was so old right the US probably mapped it out in 20 2002 and he said yeah he still lives there and then we acted like we didn't know where it was and we made a map it and it was the exact same location and then we went and got imagery and set it in front of him and his eyes got all big cuz his description wasn't good at all but he was like how did they find this house for my description right cuz he was like it was down a street and there was a school bus anyway so we Stag and start at that location Unice was three blocks from there he he was I doubt that D was involved we took a guess and he was that close to the location that we were able to capture him wow is that crazy and it's all because long time ago cia's amazing debriefing program that people always give a hard time about when it was the greatest collection of counterterrorism information ever an old piece of info from like 2002 or 2003 like helped us like do a a starting point man that is amazing yeah and then I do have a funny story so I dated a cashmir for 5 years and it was like getting a 101 into isi so by the time I got to Pakistan and I worked with isi they were the exact same so everything they did I knew like I always knew all their games like I could communicate with them perfectly because I dated someone difficult just like them for five years and so we get Unice and we capture him in the South as you know and we're all in is lamad so so they say oh it's going to take us a week to get them up there it's Eid this week you can come the week after and start detaining the briefing so we go back up and of course our station's like we got to confirm they really have Unice headquarters wants a confirmation so I said I'm just going to show up and be dumb and they're like what so on the first day of Eid it was a Monday I talk one of the other um station um targeters in with me and I say yeah we're going to drive over there we're going to pretend we have a meeting and we're going to see if Unice is there and he's like this is never going to work we're going to get in so much trouble and we went we went and pulled up to the building and like no one was working there was one guy in the GU Tower and he goes like this I'm like let us in and so we get in the isi compound we park no one's anywhere cuz everyone's off we walk in the main doors and there's a reception area no one's working in the reception area and I look at him and I I knew he was like dreading what I was going to say I said we're going down the det the detaining room so we go down when they do the detaining the briefings and we walk in the room where the CCT video cameras and I turn on all the TVs Unice is on the TV a minder walks in the room and shuts the TV off and then a couple minutes later an isi officer that notic us comes out he's like what are you guys doing here and I was like oh didn't we have a meeting today and he's like no we told you it's next week and I was like oh my gosh I always get stuff confused and so um we left and we went back we said hey we saw Unice on camera he's in Islamabad and the funny part is the next week when we went there I asked that Colonel I said what was Unice like like um and he's like oh I haven't spoke to him yet so the the minder never told him that we even saw Unice on camera so wow yeah so they spent that whole week debriefing him and pretend he wasn't even in um the city yet damn mhm damn well what was that like when you got back to station you told them everyone was so excited that it was really Unice he's really unique looking so when we saw on the camera it was 100% him so I think everyone was really excited that yes we got the right guy cuz there was still a lot of nervousness is isai really going to do with this are they going to let the guy go are they really going to do this operation with us but yeah it was all three of who we wanted to get we got all three man that's amazing yeah great work yeah well I mean wasn't me all you had you was ask him a question yeah well it was you but um let's move into Tripoli next on the Sha Ryan show people are so lost that it is this big thing and it's all connected right they want to ignore that and they want to make Bazi this little thing on the side that randomly happened when it's a piece of the whole pie they want to compartmentalize everything exactly what was the narrative about this was there was some kind of a cartoon that was made the Los Angeles Times says they're produced from an anti-islam movie that sparked violent protest across the Middle East is behind bars nakula nakula was arrested Thursday Jake Sullivan made the video narrative right and then they all jumped on board right so Obama did a statement Hillary Clinton did a statement Obama as everybody knows got on a plane to Vegas to go see Beyonce and Jay-Z it's like why did he not cancel that trip and stay and make sure his orders are followed up on right um so Obama this is while The attack's Happening mhm yeah he flew to Vegas while the attacks were happening so we have a depart we have an embassy in a CIA annx under attack and the president of the United States is flying to Vegas to meet with Beyonce yep you hear that everybody hey everybody I'm Shawn Ryan click here to subscribe to the Sha Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest and most compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find you can find that right here