Loading summary
Transcript102 lines
- [00:04]
David McCloskey
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the declassified club@therealisclassified.com this episode is sponsored by HP.
- [00:20]
Gordon Dreher
Most people are not counterespionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cyber criminals seeking to extract their secrets.
- [00:29]
David McCloskey
HP understands that approximately 4 in 10 UK businesses have reported cyber breaches in the past 12 months alone. That's why HP Business laptops, desktops and workstations bought directly on HP Store are secure, straight out of the box with their endpoint security.
- [00:45]
Gordon Dreher
No more stressing about dodgy emails or unexplained pop ups. HP's independently verified Wolff Pro Security works alongside your existing security tools to to protect your business users and reputation from malware and evolving cyber threats. With your first click.
- [01:03]
David McCloskey
You don't need an alias or a secret hideout to stay safe, just Wolff Pro Security working tirelessly to protect your hard work. It's security that's built in, not bolted on.
- [01:13]
Gordon Dreher
Find out more about how HP can protect your business@hp.com Classified podcast listeners benefit from a 10% discount on all business business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:32]
Carvana Sponsor
This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Carvana makes car selling fast and easy from start to finish. Enter your license plate or VIN and get a real offer in seconds, down to the penny. If you accept, Carvana will come pick up your car from your driveway or you can drop it off at one of our car vending machines. Either way, you get paid instantly. It's fast, transparent and 100% online car sell that saves your time. That's Carvana. Carvana Pickup fees may apply.
- [02:02]
Paleo Valley Sponsor
You're deep into your favorite true crime. The twists, the theories and suddenly hunger hits. Grab a Paleo Valley 100% grass fed beef Stick. These aren't your average gas station snacks. They're made from real beef, sourced from regenerative small American family farms. No preservatives, no gluten, no grains, soy or sugar. Just naturally fermented protein that fuels your obsession. Whether you're road tripping, hiking or pulling an all nighter with your favorite case. Choose from 5 Bold Flavors Original Jalapeno Summer Sausage, Garlic Summer Sausage and Teriyaki. They're Keto, Paleo and Carnivore friendly, made to work with your lifestyle, not against it. With over 55 million sticks sold and a 60 day money back guarantee, you've got nothing to lose. Get 15% on your first order@paleovalley.com just use code paleo at checkout.
- [03:10]
Gordon Dreher
Welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm Guden Dreher.
- [03:12]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [03:14]
Gordon Dreher
And we're journeying deep in this third episode into the host bombing of 2009. And we've been looking at this remarkable figure, Bilawi, who had been a jihadist blogger but also a quiet doctor and whom the Jordanian Intelligence service thought it had broken and turned and sent into the heart of Al Qaeda. A man who'd sent videos back showing him with Al Qaeda officials and who is suggesting, amazingly, that he is going to be able to meet with Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman Al Zawahiri, a person the CIA, the US Government is desperate to track down. And I guess here, David, the real question is, does this case make sense?
- [04:03]
David McCloskey
Yeah, it's a big question, isn't it? I mean, at this point, because on the one hand you have this, again, kind of formerly quiet, soft spoken doctor who has been sent on this, I mean really quite improbable and daring mission into the, you know, sort of federally administered tribal areas in Pakistan and who has turned up with connections inside Al Qaeda, inside the Taliban, and has video proof that he's been in the same room as a senior Al Qaeda member who has delivered intelligence on Zawahiri's medical condition that perfectly matches the CIA's understanding of his medical condition. You have a guy in Vallawi who has done and delivered accurate damage assessments from drone strikes, who has been co located with or nearby, you know, many of the sort of jihadist targets that the CIA is most interested in and that, you know, sort of gives him the bona fides of he's actually embedded with these groups. And Joby Warrick, you know, in his account in this, the triple agents says that Balawi's reporting actually led to the targeting of several Taliban soldiers. So that's the pro column here, here. I think at this point though, there is real skepticism floating around the agency about Bilawi. I mean at one point Darren Labonte, who is the Amman case officer, who's running co running this case with Ali Bin Zayd at the Jordanian gid, says this guy's too good to be true. So there's some, there's some real skepticism here. And I think if you, if we tunnel back to the actual recruitment of Bilaoi, this is where you can raise questions about whether a guy who is psychologically tortured by Jordanian intelligence during an interrogation and who in one Light is this blogger who's sort of living this online fantasy and is quick to distance himself from it, but in another is actually a jihadist true believer. Whether a jailhouse recruitment of a guy like that is really going to ever be effective, particularly when he's now outside of the control of the Jordanians. Right. He's not in Jordan. You can't arrest this guy anymore. He's off on his own.
- [06:37]
Gordon Dreher
I mean, he is under Al Qaeda control.
- [06:39]
David McCloskey
He's under Al Qaeda control in the.
- [06:41]
Gordon Dreher
Sense physically of being with them. And you're just getting these occasional messages from him. So effectively, if you're the Jordanians, you're trusting that that breaking of him was real and that he didn't. If you, like, put himself back together afterwards. But also, you know, if you're the CIA, you're doing all this one step removed, aren't you? I mean, one of the interesting things is the CIA is starting to invest more and more in, in this source and is in his importance. They've not even met the guy.
- [07:09]
David McCloskey
Well, and that's the plan is let's meet this guy. And that makes perfect sense because you kind of think, well, at this point we'd want to think about this guy. Kind of like a walk in. A classic walk in would be someone who shows up at the embassy and basically says, I want to meet someone from your intelligence service. Right. I have something. And you know, one of the first lines I think of the internal CIA review on this ended up being we needed to meet him. Right. So the idea of meeting him is not a bad one. It's a good one. You need to meet to build rapport, to understand his motivation, to assess his access and the risks that he's taking.
- [07:53]
Gordon Dreher
Stare him in the eye. Yeah, that's the job of a good case officer, isn't it? It's to be in the room with someone and make that judgment based on the direct interaction rather than reading a report.
- [08:02]
David McCloskey
And you need time because you have to. Ideally, you'd want to build some ops plan for the future. You'd want a commo plan for how you'd actually be in touch because the email is clearly, you know, clunky and has its own vulnerabilities that go with it. And, you know, the goal here would be that Balawi would lead the CIA to big, high value targets. Hvts, right. Atiya Abdelrahman, the Al Qaeda guy that he'd been in the room with.
- [08:29]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah.
- [08:29]
David McCloskey
Ayman al Zawahiri, who he's supposedly treating and Maybe even Osama bin Laden.
- [08:34]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah.
- [08:35]
David McCloskey
And again, we mention this throughout this series, but it is important to just continue to emphasize how big of a deal this case is and would be inside the CIA, because all the targeting work that went into the Courier to eventually GET bin LADEN Two years later, at this point in time, in late 2009, this looks like the best possible path to get to Osama bin Laden. But then there's a question, Gordon. Where do you meet this guy?
- [09:04]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, he's in the tribal areas. I guess the problem is he's in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan. The safest place would be to get him out, get him to Oman or get him to, you know, the West. But that's obviously going to raise all kinds of questions, isn't it? If he's going to leave, you know, for days and days and days, people are going to think that's suspicious. So that's out. So I guess, you know, you're going to have to kind of compromise or come to him or come close to him. And I mean, if you're the CIA, you can't quite. You can't just rock up into the tribal areas either. So I guess you've got to find somewhere else to meet him. Not easy.
- [09:40]
David McCloskey
No. And I guess, yeah, in the Pakistani city, you don't want the Pakistani intelligence service ISI to be in on this. And so there's, there's to be concern about that.
- [09:49]
Gordon Dreher
So Afghanistan.
- [09:51]
David McCloskey
Yeah, Eastern Afghanistan. It's reachable by car from the tribal areas. And I think this is important in this lens of like, he's a walk in. It's not uncommon for an agent, an asset, to suggest meeting locations. That makes sense. You would, all other things being equal, not want a walk in to dictate where the meeting takes place. And so you would want that.
- [10:15]
Gordon Dreher
You want to be in control.
- [10:16]
David McCloskey
You want to be in control. And eastern Afghanistan has a network of CIA bases in it that are along the border with Pakistan. But only one is on the highway that connects Marancha, which is a town in North Waziristan in Pakistan, to the city where the base is located itself. So you have essentially a road that he could take to get in. And so by this total accident of geography, the CIA is going to say, well, let's have the meeting take place at a base called Coast. It is officially called Forward Operating Base Chapman and is named for a Special Forces officer and American who was killed in the opening months of the war in Afghanistan. But the CIA refer to it as Coast Base. Now it's in a city around a city. There's about 160,000 people that live in the coast. The CIA base, this, this Camp Chapman, it's. It's perched on this kind of high plateau surrounded by hills. If you look at pictures of it, it kind of looks like the American southwest, I think, Gordon. It's very rugged topography. It's very austere. You have to the north these, what are called the White mountains, which are snow capped. It's actually where Tora Bora is, which is the sort of base where Bin Laden had mounted what might have been his last stand in 2001 before fleeing into Pakistan. And then to the east, you have these kind of low hills that mark the border with Pakistan itself. Now, the base, coast base, is kind of an island in this very hostile, hostile country. You have this base that's surrounded by concentric rings of hesco barriers. And for those who have not seen them, hesco barriers are sort of this instantly recognizable. It's a prefab, collapsible container that you can then fill with sand and, and top with razor wire. So it's a very mobile, quick way to build a defensive perimeter. The base, like so many of these spots in Afghanistan, is covered in relics from the Soviet occupation. Kind of reminds me of the fort at Kala Yangi. Gordon, from the very first episodes of the Rest is classified, where you had just kind of Soviet era machinery and outposts kind of littering the space. So there's a control tower at coast that's built by the Russians and that now serves as a lookout post. There's like a dozen or so wrecked 1980s vintage aircraft that line one side of the Runway. If you, dear listeners, are thinking that this is a very colorful scenery, you would be dead wrong. Everything is. Is colored brown or gray. It's all kind of dust coated. It's got this kind of martian feel to it. The base at coast is frequently subjected to usually very wildly inaccurate mortar volleys from the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters around it. There's like, local jihadi groups that'll try to plant improvised explosive devices or send suicide bombers against the walls, but they never amounted to much of a serious threat. And the base has just gotten bigger and bigger since 2001. So you don't just have, you know, paramilitary officers or case officers. You have targeters, you have reports officers, you have analysts who are forward deployed to these bases in Afghanistan and here. Gordon, I think it's important to set up the base chief at coast because this woman, her name's Jennifer Lynn Matthews. And at this point in the story she's not been involved at all in the Bilawi case. But again, by this accident of geography, she is going to have to orchestrate what is going to be seen from 2009, the most important meeting with a human agent that the CIA will undertake probably since 9 11.
- [14:22]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, interesting enough, she's a very important character in this story in some ways. She, in terms of the hunt for Al Qaeda, had been at the heart of it for many years, hadn't she? I mean that's one of the important aspects of her. Let's talk a bit about her and we'll come to maybe a few more details about her later. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, father was a press operator, mother and nurse, went to church cross country runner ends up though at the CIA. I mean, takes a few different parts, but ends up at the CIA first as an analyst, isn't that, Is that right?
- [14:56]
David McCloskey
Yeah. She joined the Agency, it seems, on the encouragement of a relative who had served in the intelligence community. So she applies for a job at CIA. She joins as an imagery analyst. Right. She's looking at satellite imagery and she seems to have known that she was going to be a CIA lifer from the get go. She will later become a reports officer. This is a job at the Agency where you're basically taking the raw intelligence, the operational cables from the field and turning that into a disseminated intelligence report that someone, an analyst like me would have read and incorporated into finished analytic production. She goes to Switzerland when her husband gets a job there. But then she returns back to the CIA in 1996 and here she shifts from the analytical side to the Directorate of Operations and joins a small group inside ALEC Station.
- [15:49]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, and it's worth saying what Alec Station is, it's a very interesting name. And this is 1996, when almost no one has heard of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It's just recently been formed. But this is the small group hunting it. It's led by a really interesting guy called Mike Shawyer, who I used to know pretty well actually. And it was called Alex Station actually after his son Alec. And it was a group of people who became obsessed with hunting Al Qaeda long before 911 and who could kind of see how dangerous Osama Bin Laden was and how deadly he could be. I mean they kind of foresaw it. I mean they did have a reputation, didn't they, I think in the CIA in the late 90s and they were seen as people who were kind of obsessed you know, and always kind of going on about this Osama bin Laden person and kind of banging on about why he was dangerous. And interestingly enough had a lot of women in the group, even though it was led by Mike Shawyer. The group consisted of a lot of women, including Jennifer Matthews.
- [16:49]
David McCloskey
Yeah. And they called themselves the Bay because they sat in high partition cubicles in Alex Station that was kind of arranged in this Bay formation. A lot of others in that period, it seems called that group of women the coven. So it gives you this sense of it's an insular group, it's a highly motivated group. It's a group that knows Al Qaeda inside and out. And then I think it's fair to say Morel calling Shawyer a zealot. You kind of laugh at it, but you think this group of people is fanatically committed to stopping Osama bin Laden. And of course 911 happens.
- [17:29]
Gordon Dreher
And for those people it is personally, I think devastating because they been the ones trying to stop him. And Jennifer is going to kind of keep into this group, you know, which is now part of this growing counterterrorism center. And she's going to become very involved, isn't she, in that hunt after 9 11, this job of being a targeter, which it sounds like you're targeting people for drone strikes, but actually what it really meant was finding people, wasn't it? It was using all the kind of different trails of data and information and you know, intelligent CI could collect to find, find and locate and work out who the people were in Al Qaeda and then be able to work out where to get them.
- [18:07]
David McCloskey
I think she's one of the first officers to ever have that title of targeter because it was kind of a new practice in the agency in the late 90s and early 2000s inside CTC. And Jennifer led the search for this AQ logistics guy and eventually traces him to a safe house in Pakistan where he's nabbed by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. This logistics guru is kind of. He's one of the first Al Qaeda operatives caught by CIA after 9 11. And within days of his capture, he identifies Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the lead architect of 9 11. And it's a big win for Jennifer.
- [18:51]
Gordon Dreher
And I mean, she's very, very hard charging, isn't she? I mean, that's one of the things she's seen as, as very dedicated, I think it's worth saying. One of the reasons and one of the things that shapes her is the fact that in the years after 9 11, of course there is this question about, did the CIA screw up? Was there an intelligence failure? And we'll look at that in detail at some other point. But there are questions about whether the group hunting bin Laden had failed to share information with the FBI about two of the hijackers in advance of 9 11, which potentially could have stopped 9 11. And there will be investigations within the CIA about that. And Jennifer will be named in that internally, won't she? And I think this is a kind of important part of her story.
- [19:34]
David McCloskey
Yeah. She winds up on a list of named agency managers that the inspector general recommended be reviewed for possible disciplinary action. This didn't happen. Then Director Porter Goss decided not to discipline anybody. But I think this combination of having been so deep in the hunt and this sort of ultimately failed effort to stop 9 11, and then afterward to be named as someone who maybe could have stopped the attack but didn't, that's a haunting position, I think, to be.
- [20:12]
Gordon Dreher
In, and I think explains some of her drive and her ambition is she's, I think, unfairly gets the nickname of Ruth for ruthless. But I think if you see it in another way, this is someone actually who's, you know, spent more than a decade hunting for Al Qaeda, has seen what they can do, fears that they may be implicated somehow, failed to do something, and he's absolutely just determined to. To stop Al Qaeda and to get to the leadership.
- [20:36]
David McCloskey
Yeah. And so there's definitely that motivation around hunting Al Qaeda and, And bin Laden and the senior leadership. But there is also, I think, the. The reality that she's a CIA lifer who wanted to do this work for the rest of her days, and she wants to advance in the organization. And a targeter is a desk job. You're working typically from Langley. She'd been working from Langley for her entire career. Then in 2005, she takes a job as the CIA's Counterterrorism center, essentially liaison officer in London, which, you know, makes sense because of her CT focus. London's, I guess it's a nice place, Gordon, you know, but the reality of CIA promotions is, like you. You really can't get your. Your SIS promotion, CIS Senior Intelligence Service without time overseas. And so London is kind of a way to start doing that for her. Yeah.
- [21:36]
Gordon Dreher
And I guess this is. This is a bit where it's tricky for me because I should say I knew her, so I knew her when she was in London. It is a bit difficult to talk about. I think the obvious assumption would be that I knew her as a journalist, but actually I knew her in a kind of strangely, in a personal capacity outside of work initially. And I'll just share two kind of brief stories. One is, so I kind of knew her a bit, but I didn't know what she did. Had no idea. And then I was at the US Embassy's, the American ambassador has a big Fourth of July party, and I bump into her at a kind of Fourth of July party, and I say, oh, what are you doing here? And she says, oh, I work at the embassy. And I say, oh, what do you do at the embassy? And then she gives me a reply, which I won't repeat on the podcast. But she gives me a name, which because I did the job I do the job I do as a national security journalist, I knew that name was a cover name for the CIA station in the embassy, one of the COVID names they use. And so I kind of clearly didn't have a very good poker face because I think she could see my eyes widened when I realized at that point that she was giving me a cover name. So she just looked at me and she said something like, you know what that means, don't you? And then after that, whenever we kind of bumped into each other, she never uttered the word CIA, and I never asked her about it, but I think we both knew. I knew she knew and she knew I knew, et cetera. And actually, I remember going to Afghanistan in February, I think, of 2009, so. Or maybe around that time, and talking to her about it and realizing as well she knew a lot about Afghanistan. I mean, like, I had no idea about her background in Alex Station or any of these things, but it was clear to me, just from the way she was asking me about things, that she knew a lot about it. And then last one, a very vivid memory I have of the last time I spoke to her, because it was a very kind of strange place. It was a kind of bouncy castle, long story. And she. She told me she was leaving. She told me she was leaving London. She said she was going, and she said. She told me she was going to Afghanistan. And she didn't say coast. I assumed Kabul, actually. And it was very interesting because, you know, she said to me she was going out and I was talking to her about it, and I think she knew there was an element of danger. But I also think I sensed from her she felt she'd had. She'd had a very comfortable life in London for four years, you know, including with her family. And she had this. As we talked about this overriding sense of Mission and going to Afghanistan was something I think she felt she had to do both career wise, but also I think personally having. I think she felt almost a slight guilt at having been comfortable in London while the kind of war is being fought out there in Pakistan, Afghanistan. I think in her mind, it very much felt like it would be a year. I think that was the posting, a year in Afghanistan and then back to Virginia and back to kind of normal life, having done the frontline position. So I can, you know, recall that conversation where, you know, she basically said, yeah, she's leaving London and doing that short posting at a war zone, which I guess from what you're saying as well is career wise was the thing that someone like her needed to do.
- [24:36]
David McCloskey
Yeah, yeah. I think it's the merging of two really important threads in her life, which is how do you get closer to the fight against Al Qaeda and how do you do something that will put you on a track to moving forward inside the counterterrorism center? And the answer is, well, you take over this job out in Kost, right at this base, which there's a slot opening up, lo and behold. And I think it's a one year slot which is kind of unique. I mean, there'd be slots in Baghdad or in Kabul that could be two to three years. And that's in some ways, I guess you could think about it as harder because those are not accompanied posts in Baghdad or Kabul. And so she's got, at this point, three kids. And so being away for three years with R and R stints in between is pretty rough. But if you could do a one year sprint. Yeah, that maybe holds some appeal. You're also, frankly, more on the front lines of the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban if you're out in Coast. And I think it's worth saying that typically, like, if you're in Iraq in this period, the bases that exist in Iraq are really going to ladder up to the overall station in Baghdad. This is not how it worked in Afghanistan in 2009. The way it worked was Kabul station was going to be, you know, sort of staffed and run by what at the time was any division management, near east division management. The counterterrorism center picked the leaders for the bases. And so the counterterrorism center kind of front office, it has a tremendous amount of influence over who becomes the base chief in Coast. And Matthews, I mean, despite all of her depth on. On the Al Qaeda target right over a long period of time, is in some ways a atypical pick to be a base chief because at this point, again, she's been a targeter, an imagery analyst, a reports officer. She's not gone through the typical ops training that you would give to a case officer or a paramilitary officer who's kind of dual hatted as a case officer to run one of these. Run one of these bases. So there is some dissension, it seems, inside the agency over her as the pick for base chief. And I think, yeah, this is one of the harder parts of the story to talk about because you get the sense, I think Joby Warwick does a good job in his book of kind of bringing this out. You get the sense that there's also a thread here of like Jennifer Matthews is a really competent intelligence officer who's, who has come up in an organization that has traditionally been dominated by men and where all of these senior case officer sort of slots, you know, are typically held by men. And so there's an element to this where the dissension among some quarters kind of bleeds toward sexism.
- [28:05]
Gordon Dreher
I agree women can't do this job and why did I put this woman to this job? But I agree there are legitimate questions.
- [28:11]
David McCloskey
Yeah, some of the other dissension though is we need people who have gone through the full gamut of ops and security training before they run, run a base in eastern Afghanistan.
- [28:23]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, she will get some training. Obviously, you know, she gets a kind of three week overseas preparation course which I guess is designed to teach survival skills kind of what could go wrong in somewhere really dangerous. I mean, did you have similar things when you were.
- [28:37]
David McCloskey
Mine was much shorter because I didn't go to Iraq or Afghanistan. So you know, it wasn't a war zone. But I mean, in this case, civilian officers going to Afghanistan were required to take. I think it was a three week kind of overseas preparation course, basic war zone survival, security, shooting skills, defensive driving, first aid, things like that. Ten years earlier, the same course had been 21 weeks long and, and it had extensive instruction on bombs and explosives.
- [29:05]
Gordon Dreher
Which is maybe a reflection of how many people you've got going through.
- [29:08]
David McCloskey
Totally. Yeah, exactly.
- [29:10]
Gordon Dreher
You know, now post 9, 11, you've got so many people going through Iraq and Afghanistan, you can't afford to put them on like a long, long courses, you know, for 21 weeks. It's got to be the three week course. She does kind of talk to people about it. She goes to people she knows, former CIA officers and people about the decision of whether or not to go to coast. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because some people tell her not to go there.
- [29:29]
David McCloskey
Yeah, don't do it, don't do it.
- [29:30]
Gordon Dreher
They say, you know, it's a paramilitary environment rather than, if you like, a regular intelligence environment. And it sounds like she has a real argument with one of these people, doesn't it? It becomes very heated when he tries to tell her not to go. Someone who clearly she kind of went to for advice.
- [29:45]
David McCloskey
Yeah, no, exactly. And we'll talk about it a little bit more, I think, in the, in the next episode. But Jennifer is famously portrayed in Zero Dark Thirty. And I have to say, as I think many of the people who knew her, I didn't know her, but I found the depiction to be horrendous. There's a kind of a Southern girl affect that the actress uses and she comes across, I think, in the film as not being particularly competent. And that is very much not who Jennifer Matthews was.
- [30:24]
Gordon Dreher
No. In fact, interesting enough, I actually didn't watch Zero Dark Thirty for many years after it came out because I. Someone warned me about that depiction. I just thought, I don't want to see it. I've watched it since and we talked about it actually on a bonus podcast and kind of picked it apart a bit in the context of bin Laden. But, yeah, partly because I kind of thought the portrayal wasn't, wasn't quite right of her. But she's made that decision, you know, she has the arguments with people. She clearly thought it was something she wanted to do. So by, I guess it's late 2009, fall, autumn 2009, she is now out in host in Afghanistan. She's not, as we've said, been involved in this case before, though. And yet just by chance it is to her, it will fall to host this absolutely crucial meeting with someone who people think could be the most important agent, the most important source they've had for years in the hunt for the Al Qaeda leadership. So maybe there. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll see how the buildup goes to that all important meeting.
- [31:36]
David McCloskey
This episode is brought to you by attio, the CRM for the AI era.
- [31:41]
Gordon Dreher
Now, David, people think that spycraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around waiting for the action.
- [31:51]
David McCloskey
It's a bit like starting your own business. You think it's going to be as easy as creating and selling a product, but the reality is business owners spend far too long trying to get their CRM to fit a system not built for. For them.
- [32:03]
Gordon Dreher
Attio's AI driven CRM enables you to take control of your platform to build something from the ground up that fits your needs.
- [32:12]
David McCloskey
James Bond had Q's, x ray shades, an explosive watch and a pen grenade. Business owners have Adeo's real time customer insights and platform that grows with them. All tools relevant for your mission to build a company from the ground up.
- [32:27]
Gordon Dreher
Attio even has something called agent collaboration.
- [32:31]
David McCloskey
Yes, but in this case that means giving people the ability to let AI work seamlessly in the background for them.
- [32:38]
Gordon Dreher
Try Attio for free@attio.com trick.
- [32:46]
Jack Daniels Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
- [33:13]
New Balance Sponsor
At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're.
- [33:16]
Paleo Valley Sponsor
A runner.
- [33:20]
New Balance Sponsor
However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com Running.
- [33:46]
Gordon Dreher
Okay, welcome back. We've been looking at Balawi, this crucial source. The Jordanians and the CIA have they think in the heart of Al Qaeda and this plan to try and arrange a face to face meeting between him and the CIA.
- [34:03]
David McCloskey
DAVID well, and Ali Bin Zayd, the Jordanian case officer still back in Amman, you know, is looking at this incredible reporting that's coming in from Balawi, you know, hinting that he might be able to actually get into the same room as Zawahiri and, you know, lead GID and the Americans to this incredible, incredible target. Bin Zaid says he wants to take things up a notch and he wants to meet with Bilawi and he wants to arrange the location for that meeting. And of course, as we've been talking, you know, bin Zayed says let's, let's meet in coast at the American base. Now. Balawi again in these emails, agrees in concept to a meeting, but immediately begins to throw out conditions. He doesn't want to meet with anyone but Bin Zayd. He says it's too dangerous for me to cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan. He says you should come to me, which means to Moranshah in the tribal areas. Bilawi says, you know, if you come to me in Marancia, I can find a place to meet. It won't attract any attention. Now, I do think. Pause here for a second. It's worth noting, of course, this tragedy is going to dramatically impact the CIA at this point. When you're looking at these messages from Balawi, this feels a lot like he's after the Jordanian. He's after Ali bin Zayed.
- [35:33]
Gordon Dreher
He wants to lure him into Pakistan.
- [35:36]
David McCloskey
Now bin Zayd pushes back because again, he's a good case officer. He doesn't want to have a meeting under Balawi's control. Again, it's not uncommon for, you know, an asset to suggest a location for a meeting, but you don't want to do that in a place where you have no ability to control the turf. Right. Bin Zayed pushes back, but Balawi is insistent on Marancia. And Bilawi says, you know, I'm the one who's taken all the risks. He worries about Afghan spies on the US Base. He says, look, if, you know, if any of them are informants and they rat on me, I will be killed. And Bin Zayd and his CIA partner in this case, Darren Labonte, they're really in a very high pressure spot because this case, I mean, as we said last time, like this case has been briefed to the President of the United States. It's doubtless been briefed to the Jordanian king, to King Abdullah. The senior people in CIA and GID are watching this thing like a hawk. And yet they both, both Ben Zeta and Levante, I think in some moments do seem to harbor doubt about Bilawi. You know, how does this nervous, kind of soft spoken, introverted doctor, how does he get so close to Al Qaeda so quickly? Maybe he's trying to scam us. He's trying to get, get paid again. You know, you sort of think about this like a walk in, though, despite all of these concerns, you say there's still something to be gained by meeting with him. And Bin Zade and Labonte are even as they're trying to negotiate with, with Balawi about where the meeting is going to happen. Both of these guys are preparing to go to coast. Now, Gid and I think this is one of the other dynamics here that's kind of interesting is the extent to which there are some people inside GID above Ali bin Zayd who resent him.
- [37:33]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, he's a member of the royal family. He's the rising star.
- [37:37]
David McCloskey
Right. And you can kind of picture some older guys who have maybe been around a little bit longer who are looking at this case and have A kind of complicated swirl of emotion around it, who think maybe it's not that good of a case. How can we trust a jailhouse recruit when he's not in Amman, Jordan, and we've sent him out into Pakistan? What's really the motivation here? Are we being played? But also maybe there's this sort of personal jealousy around Ali bin Zayd. As you can see, there's kind of this complex swirl of stuff that's probably going on inside GID as well. And initially Ali bin Zayed's superiors say, look, you cannot go to Afghanistan and have this meeting. It's too dangerous. We don't want. I mean, you could imagine for the kingdom a Jordanian royal being, know, kidnapped by Al Qaeda. I mean, it's an absolute disaster. But Ali bin Zayed, it seems, again, in Joby Warwick's account of this, it seems like he does play a bit of the kind of trump, American trump card here and says, well, if you don't let me go, I'll just go with the Americans.
- [38:51]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, the Americans want me.
- [38:53]
David McCloskey
The Americans want me. And eventually it does seem like he works something out where Iman station says, we want Ali bin Zayd to go. And look, frankly, it does make sense to have the case officer go.
- [39:02]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, yeah, the guy who knows him.
- [39:03]
David McCloskey
So he's standing on solid ground there now. So they're getting ready to go. It's, you know, early December 2009. Darren Labonte has a wife and a very young daughter in Amman. And Labonte seems to have in part chosen Amman because he had done several unaccompanied tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he's finally in a place where his wife and daughter can be with him. They are planning to spend the holidays at a villa in Tuscany. And it seems like his wife had sort of pieced together enough of his concerns about this operation that she's uncomfortable. Yeah, that she was uncomfortable with it and had some doubts about the asset he was going to meet. I mean, in the Warwick account of this, you know, at one point she, when they're talking about him going, his wife Rachel says, you know, he could turn out to be a suicide bomber. As we said before, um, the Labontes and the Bin Zades are friends. They're, they're social friends. And apparently right before Darren Labonte and Ali bin Zader headed to Afghanistan, the couples gather to have kind of last farewell coffee at the Labonte's apartment in Amman. So they meet at 5 in the morning, just before the, the two guys go to the airport. They apparently don't want to do the goodbyes at the airport, of course, because it's kind of, you know, messy and sad in public and hey, have coffee out on the balcony and then, you know, get ready to actually head to the airport to go out to Afghanistan. And of course the meeting is not set yet, but they might have to wait there for a while. And this is, this is the point where some of those concerns that had been zinging around largely informal channels inside both intelligence services at CIA and GID start to pop out a little bit more into the open. Because apparently a senior Jordanian official at GID calls someone in Amman station and says, you know, we've got some serious concerns about this case. And you know, I find this kind of fascinating because it does, it shows the seriousness and the depth of the Jordanian thinking on a big counterintelligence case. And the Jordanian official says, look, I got two concerns. The first one he says is historical precedent. You know, we know jihadists, we've been working with them and against them for 40 years, going all the way back to Palestinian terrorism in Black September. Right? And we kind of know which ones can be flipped. You've got the low level thugs that are working for money, the criminals. You know, it's pretty easy to flip those guys. But there's ideological types that don't switch sides. You know, they're true believers. And Bilawi has all the hallmarks of a true believer. This guy is not flippable. And he's telling us he's flipped. So that's concern one, the second concern, and this is obviously someone inside GI who'd been reading the traffic on the case, all the back and forth, the emails, the reports that Ben Zaid had been writing up. You know, his second concern was he's like, okay, Balawi is insisting on a meeting in Pakistan, in Marancia instead of in a fortified base. It sounds like an ambush. He's trying to ambush you, Us, really, is what this Jordan is saying.
- [42:25]
Gordon Dreher
Because all valid concerns, right?
- [42:27]
David McCloskey
All valid concerns. Now here's the problem. They're theoretical concerns at this point.
- [42:32]
Gordon Dreher
How'd you prove it? Yeah, how do you be sure? How do you balance that out against the potential benefit that you'd get from him? Yeah, you haven't got hard evidence he's bad. All you've got is that suspicion or possibility versus the potential payoff of getting him, right, isn't it? That's the problem.
- [42:49]
David McCloskey
This is the final point that the GID officer raises, and I think it's a fascinating one. He Says, you know, maybe Ali Bin Zayd is not the right officer for this case. And here's the thing. How do you interpret that? You could interpret that as Ali bin Zayed has fallen in love with this agent.
- [43:07]
Gordon Dreher
Meaning he's over invested in it.
- [43:09]
David McCloskey
He's over invested? Yeah. Not actually romantically, but he's overinvested, he's fallen in love with the case. Right. And he's become blinded to some of the risk. You could read it that way or you could read that as internal politicking inside gid resentment of Ali bin Zayd.
- [43:26]
Gordon Dreher
This young royal guy.
- [43:27]
David McCloskey
Yeah, it's like it's this guy with royal blood who's kind of, you know, he gets to do whatever he wants. And we old crusty guys who are smoking six packs a day of cigarettes back here at the fingernail factory, like, we're not going to get any of the praise for it. Right.
- [43:41]
Gordon Dreher
So you can. Yeah, you can see the. It's hard to interpret, isn't it?
- [43:44]
David McCloskey
Yeah. And you could interpret that either way. But at this point, you got to be thinking from a Mon station perspective. If you stand up and say, hey, one guy in the Jordanian service doesn't buy it, is that going to stop any of this from happening? Or are you going to be the one who said, let's not, you know, let's not meet with the guy who might lead us to Zawahiri and bin Laden?
- [44:05]
Gordon Dreher
No. And it's worth saying, isn't it, that this is, you know, this guy is the kind of golden source. And we talked previously, didn't we, about the pressure on this case and the expectation around this case. You know, the fact that President Obama has been briefed on this case and on the potential for a meeting. The pressure to succeed is growing and is bound to weigh heavily against any concerns that come up. And, you know, you're going to find a reason to discount those concerns. You've got whole organizations and leaderships who are invested in this case and in this source.
- [44:41]
David McCloskey
I think the central choreography for this is being run inside ctc. There's a lot of other fingers sort of in the, in the pie. But this is a CT case that is being run by a very aggressive CTC front office at the time that's prosecuting what it, I think rightly sees as the administration's number one priority, which is the war against Al Qaeda.
- [45:08]
Gordon Dreher
And then to bring it back to Jennifer Matthews and host, she is the one who is running the base, who has got to write the plan on how to Deal with it. It's not her case. She's kind of inherited it because she's running this base and all these layers of expectation are there, but she's got to work out how to deal with the agent on his way in.
- [45:28]
David McCloskey
You could tick through the complexities here. Right. Or the different facets of this you need to work out. The first one is, okay, well, how do we transport Bilaoi to coast? The timing is really, really important. I mean, they. They thought they'd have maybe nine hours with Bilawi inside the base. Realistically, that sounds, I guess, like a lot of time. But if you're talking about a meeting with the most important source the agency is running, it's not a lot of time. He's got to be extracted from Pakistan without Al Qaeda or the Taliban, without knowing where he's going. So the idea is we'll send a trusted Afghan driver from the base who will go and pick him up at the border. Order. Right. Now, the COVID What's his explanation to. To his hosts right in Pakistan. And the idea is that as Zawahiri's doctor, Balawi can claim that he'll need to go into Marancia for medicine. And he obviously won't get medicine in Morontia, but the CIA, during the meeting, will provide him with a package to take home. It'll be like pills for, you know, Zohari's bad circulation and some other medicine for his diabetes.
- [46:38]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah.
- [46:39]
David McCloskey
And how do you manage confidentiality on the base? The base is a big base. There are local Afghan guards. There's, you know, obviously the US Military, and he's.
- [46:50]
Gordon Dreher
He's an agent. You've got to protect his identity.
- [46:52]
David McCloskey
And you've got to protect. Yeah. His identity. It's obviously something in the email traffic with Bin Zaid that, you know, Bilawi is deeply concerned about this. And the front gate is a concern because you have these Afghan soldiers that man the outer perimeter. You know, it seems likely that the Taliban has informants among them. Now, how do you balance the risk, the security risk that Balawi provides with his confidentiality? Right. That's the tension here. Here's another big question, which is how do you run the meeting itself? It seems that Matthews decided that the group should be large, both larger than is typical. And we'll talk about what that means to allow for more evaluation of Bilawi and to benefit from the sort of breadth of experience that the team would have on Al Qaeda and the Taliban, because, again, you're going to have a lot of questions for this guy. And the quality of the intel you collect is going to be directly connected to the quality of the questions that you ask. A large group is not what you would want from a CIA counterintelligence perspective. Because again, if you think about Balawi as a walk in which he kind of is, you would want like one CIA officer to meet with him because you don't want him to see 12, 13, 14 people and be able to report that back to Al Qaeda or to the Taliban. But importantly, he's not treated like a walk in, you know, because he's the biggest source, the most important source that CTC is running.
- [48:44]
Gordon Dreher
You know, there is this line he has to be made to feel welcomed. And that's, I guess, the tension there, isn't it, is that they want to make him feel welcomed and relaxed and maybe have lots of people to assess him. And that requires a certain structure around the meeting which is going to define it. Which is back to this idea about being, you know, kind of invested into this source, isn't it?
- [49:08]
David McCloskey
Yeah, I mean, there's a tension, right, because if you draw up an ops plan for a meeting with a source who has been working with you for several years and who is highly trusted and who has been vetted consistently over and over again and has been run through all the CI reviews and all that kind of stuff, you run the meeting a certain way. If, if you don't know much about the guy and you haven't actually vetted him, nor have you met him, there would have been at the time even a set of security protocols for a high threat meeting. And that would call for certainly a security check outside of the base and for a smaller number of people.
- [49:49]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah, and the problem is here, more and more people are going to get added to the meeting. This is actually going to cause some tension in the run up, isn't it? This issue of how many people are going to be there. I mean, they're having kind of discussions about it in advance. And I think Darren Lebont kind of. He criticizes it, doesn't he? And suggests it's too many. That's according to some of the accounts, because they're talking about up to 13 people being outside waiting for him.
- [50:18]
David McCloskey
The sort of testimonies in Joby Warwick's book suggest that there were rehearsals for the meeting. And it makes sense that you would rehearse pieces of this. Cause this is a tightly choreographed session with Bilawi. You might only get to see him once, but part of that was rehearsing kind of the arrival, it seems, and large number of people who'd be standing outside this building to. To greet him. Darren Labonte, I guess, at one point called it a gaggle and a clown show. You know, he and Ali Bin Zayd have been sitting at this point in Afghanistan for two weeks waiting on Balawi to show up during the holidays. Everyone's kind of getting antsy and agitated. It does seem like, as the ops plan is being formulated, that the CIA security people, the GRS people on the base, were also frustrated with the plan. And one of the guards, who's an ex SEAL, apparently emailed a friend on the 21st of December and kind of hinted that he had differences with the CIA leadership over something, but he's not clear about what it is. You know, he said, you know, sometimes it's your job to say something, sir. I don't think you should do that. It's not a good idea. Labonte sends, you know, a note to CIA management in Jordan. He says, look, there's three problems with this. Too many people involved, we're moving too quickly. We're giving up too much control by letting Bilawi dictate events. And I think this is where you think, okay, well, there's tons of warnings. Right? Well, what we're talking about here is like, emails to friends, what at the time, our instant messaging program was called Same time. Right. And it was, like, informal, or like you're sending an email back and forth to somebody. It's not official cable traffic. And if it's not official cable traffic, it's not real, in a sense.
- [52:13]
Gordon Dreher
Yeah.
- [52:13]
David McCloskey
It's also freezing cold in eastern Afghanistan in December. They're trapped on this base. They're living essentially in, like, glorified trailers. And so it's a awful Merry Christmas from Afghanistan.
- [52:30]
Gordon Dreher
So there with the CIA base waiting for its agent on the other side of the border in Pakistan is Balawi under his own kind of intense pressure. And next time, as we come back, we'll see what he's been preparing for this meeting in the final episode of this story. And just a reminder, of course, if you don't want to wait, if you want to hear it now, you can do so by joining the Rest is Classified club, the declassified club@therestdisclassified.com but otherwise, we'll see you next time.
- [53:03]
David McCloskey
We'll see you next time.
- [53:09]
New Balance Sponsor
Take the next 30 seconds to invest in yourself with Vanguard. Breathe in. Center your mind. Recognize the power you have to direct, direct your financial future. Feel the freedom that comes with reaching your goals and building a life you love. Vanguard brings you this meditation because we invest where it matters most in you. Visit vanguard.com investinginyou to learn more. All investing is subject to risk, so.
- [53:39]
GoDaddy Sponsor
You want to start a business. You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but you don't. You just need GoDaddy arrows. I'm Walton Goggins and as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo, it'll create a custom website, it'll write social posts for you, and even set you up with a social media calendar. Get started@godaddy.com Aero that's godaddy.com Airo this.
- [54:10]
New Balance Sponsor
Episode is brought to you by Marketa. When it comes to your payments provider, you can't afford to compromise. Marketa's modern payment solutions flex with your business without the trade offs. Stable and agile, Secure and innovative. Scalable and configurable. If they say you can't have it all, don't believe them. Your business demands more. Choose a payments provider that delivers more. Choose Marketa. Visit Marketa.com Spotify to learn more.