S1E17 Zain

About this episode

John Kiriakou shares his experience of handling Abu Zubaydah, exploring the human connection formed during interrogation.

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.

People in this episode

Hosts: John Kiriakou, Alan Katz

Topics covered

• interrogation
• torture
• human connection
• terrorism
• CIA
• rendition

Keywords

• Abu Zubaydah
• interrogation
• CIA
• torture
• rendition
• terrorism
• human connection

More episodes of John Kiriakou's Dead Drop

• S2E4 With Friends Like These · June 8, 2026 · 33 min
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• S2E2 Rules Of The Game · May 25, 2026 · 35 min
• S2E1 Welcome To Loretto · May 18, 2026 · 31 min
• S1E27 Prisoner Ex · May 11, 2026 · 36 min
• S1E26 Did John Le Carre Invent The Modern Spy? · May 4, 2026 · 1h 8m