S1E17 Zain

John Kiriakou's Dead Drop

Costard & Touchstone Productions

Travel, Personal Journals, Torture, Secret Agents, History, Spies, Documentary, Spying, Secrets, Cia, Espionage, Heroism, Society & Culture

4.9 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

THE BLURB: For 70 hours, almost three days, John was responsible for handling Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist the agency believed was Al Qaeda's number three. Though their time togeter was relatively short - and Zain (Abu Zubaydah's actual name) spent much of it unconscious - John did manage to build a human connection with him and began to appreciate the person inside the nom de guerre. Zain is renditioned elsewhere. John goes back to work interrogating all the other terrorists they'd grabbed alongside Abu Zubaydah while Abu Zubaydah begins to encounter the treatment that would ultimately lead to torture.

SHOW NOTES

For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.
0:06.2	When we left off, Abu Zabeda was lying in a hospital bed in a small eight-bed emergency
0:12.3	hospital that sat quite conveniently opposite the end of a military runway.
0:18.5	Pakistani intelligence had helicoptered us all there because Abu Zabedda's terrorist cohorts
0:23.6	had descended upon the first hospital and began spraying it with gunfire.
0:28.6	By that point, Zane was so badly wounded that the young Pakistani doctor tasked with his care
0:34.6	took one look at him and told us that we had a better chance of winning a
0:39.0	powerball lottery than we did of keeping him alive.
0:42.0	Seriously, Doc, I said.
0:44.0	He's got to live.
0:45.0	He's an important guy and we really need to get him the best care we can.
0:50.8	I literally had orders to tell any doctor treating Zane to stabilize him the best they could
0:57.0	to stop the bleeding and treat him beyond that only if an emergency popped up.
1:02.0	Our goals to get him Western-style medical care ASAP and then interrogate the hell out of him.
1:09.0	The director's office at headquarters had ordered 24-7 CIA eyes on.
1:14.7	Those were the exact words.
1:16.9	As Ains handler, that meant that I would not leave his bedside.
1:20.7	Screw being tired.
1:21.7	I was out of luck.
1:23.7	Inside my head, I pushed wooziness aside.
1:27.4	Logistics and strategizing took its place.
1:30.7	I quickly prioritized everything I needed to prioritize with a plan, A, B, C, and D.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Costard & Touchstone Productions, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Costard & Touchstone Productions and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.