#81 Sarah Adams - CIA Targeter Exposes How Hamza bin Laden is Alive | Part 1

This episode is a follow up to our investigation into the Benghazi attacks with Mark Geist. Sarah Adams is a former CIA Targeter with a wealth of experience leading intelligence initiatives during the Global War on Terror. In part one of this two part series, Adams gives us an overview of what it's like to run targeting and intelligence operations for the U. S. She also outlines the power structures of different terrorist groups around the world and how they continue to operate today. Adams also covers the growing threats in Afghanistan after the United States withdrawal and what Americans should be concerned about in a post-war world. Get Sarah's intel briefing via the newsletter: https://shawnryanshow.com/pages/newsletter Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://goldco.com/ryan | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner https://puretalk.com/ryan https://bubsnaturals.com/shawn - USE CODE "SHAWN" Sarah Adams Links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahadams IG - https://www.instagram.com/askarimediagroup Website - https://askarimediagroup.com Book - https://www.amazon.com/Benghazi-Know-Enemy-Sarah-Adams/dp/B0BHMV2Q8S Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment, with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu.

• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  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 Geist 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?"

• 1:44Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 2:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's what happens when you leave a border wide open to a country who has a lot of enemies.

• 2:09Shawn Ryan?

  Now, we're gonna 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 Podcasts 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?

• 2:33Shawn Ryan?

  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 Sean Ryan Show. Anyways, Patreon, I love you. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Sarah Adams, former CIA analyst and targeter to The Sean Ryan Show. Love you all. Cheers.

• 3:22Shawn Ryan?

  Sarah Adams, welcome to The Sean Ryan Show.

• 3:25Sarah Adams?

  Thank you. Great to be here.

• 3:26Shawn Ryan?

  So, we've been batting back and forth for, I think, a little over a year now. And then 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 I really wanted to get into some of the stuff that the Obama administration had to do with the, with the teams that could have gone in and... Helped, 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, and then on top of that, we've got a whole bunch of other stuff to talk about, current day stuff, some of your career at

• 4:09Shawn Ryan?

  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 9/11 attacks, counterterrorism analyst and targeter for the CIA, senior advisor on the Select Committee on Benghazi. So, just for the audience, real quick, can you go over the difference between an analyst at CIA and a targeter?

• 4:41Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, the most simple thing is an analyst, their day-to-day job is to answer the questions policymakers give. So maybe a congressman asks the CIA, what is happening with the oil facilities in Libya, for example, and they'll pull all the info together the CIA 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, and it was to bridge the gap between case officers and analysts. So it was supposed to be like an operational node that took the best from analysts, took the best from targeters, and helped move

• 5:23Sarah Adams?

  operations forward. So the focus of it is to move operations forward.

• 5:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, okay. So I got a couple of questions. We have a subscription network on Patreon, and that's basically what enables me to do this job. And so, this was a pretty good question from one of our patrons. 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?

• 5:52Shawn Ryan?

  Was this a revelation to you? Or had you seen similar things like this happen before Benghazi?

• 5:58Sarah Adams?

  Sure. 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 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. That one, I pretty much knew in real time they were covering it up because the team lead for the GRS in Tripoli like whispered it 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. I already had the indication that CIA was going to cover that piece up.

• 6:41Sarah Adams?

  The protest narrative, it was about a week after the attacks. We got the two 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 was a protest. Nobody in town reported a protest. But when we watched the videos, there was no protest. So we called 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 carry 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.

• 7:21Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't?

• 7:22Sarah Adams?

  No, so that's when I realized, okay, the narrative is what they want. They don't actually care if there's facts, whether there's a protest or not.

• 7:29Shawn Ryan?

  How did that make you feel?

• 7:31Sarah Adams?

  Oh, I was pretty angry. And luckily, our chief of station at the time, he agreed there was no protest because 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 were doing our jobs, we were trying to find the attackers, trying to figure out who was involved. So he would write dissents to like all the CIA would write all these reports about the protest and he would send dissents. You know, Chief of Station Triply does not agree with this piece, so that there was not a protest. So that's really all we could do from the field, as you know, because the field sometimes gets overruled by what headquarters thinks is the truth.

• 8:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, you've been following, 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 what the outcome was with some of them. I mean, has there been any justice at all?

• 8:26Sarah Adams?

  There's been a little bit of justice. 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. The French did kill the top three, 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 the mastermind of the CIA annex piece of the attack. And the good part is, he killed him in a mortar strike. So, so we kind of appreciate that.

• 9:02Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Good. Eye for an eye, right?

• 9:05Sarah Adams?

  Hey, take him out that way. There's no other way you could have taken him out, honestly.

• 9:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding. Well, hey, before we get too into the weeds and dive in, everybody always gets a gift.

• 9:16Sarah Adams?

  Ah, thank you.

• 9:18Shawn Ryan?

  So there you go.

• 9:19Sarah Adams?

  Okay.

• 9:22Sarah Adams?

  Very nice. And good, it's all coffee too, because I had to confirm with you that there was nothing with pot in any of these things.

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no, no pot.

• 9:31Sarah Adams?

  There's some weird rumors.

• 9:32Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody thinks that-

• 9:33Sarah Adams?

  Wait, wait, you gave me performance mushrooms. I probably can't do this.

• 9:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no, this is good stuff.

• 9:38Sarah Adams?

  Okay, okay.

• 9:39Shawn Ryan?

  These are, these are legal mushrooms, but have you heard a lot of the benefits from mushrooms that have been going on in the veteran community?

• 9:46Sarah Adams?

  No, I have been hearing a lot.

• 9:47Shawn Ryan?

  So- I did, I did a psychedelic treatment.

• 9:51Sarah Adams?

  Okay.

• 9:52Shawn Ryan?

  I got a ton of benefits from it.

• 9:53Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, a ton of Blackwater people have been doing this.

• 9:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, it's huge.

• 9:57Shawn Ryan?

  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 Laird Superfood. They have the finest ingredients. And, uh, yeah.

• 10:07Sarah Adams?

  Perfect.

• 10:08Shawn Ryan?

  So, mix that with your coffee, don't.

• 10:10Sarah Adams?

  I mean, I'm gonna for sure double check I can have mushrooms and then I'm gonna mix it in my coffee.

• 10:13Shawn Ryan?

  You are good to go with that, I promise.

• 10:16Sarah Adams?

  Thank you.

• 10:16Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, it's all about brain health here, so that's why, that's why I give that out. But, um, alright, so let's get into it. You ready?

• 10:26Sarah Adams?

  Yep.

• 10:26Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so, let's talk about how you got into the agency. What year did you go?

• 10:33Sarah Adams?

  I joined in 2006 and I have the most boring route ever into the agency. I applied online.

• 10:41Sarah Adams?

  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 gonna get a job? I had never even thought of 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.

• 11:04Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, I mean, did you see them at a recruiting event or anything?

• 11:10Sarah Adams?

  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 kinda 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 gonna do for a job? And then I was like, who works Kashmir? And the only thing I could think of was the CIA, so I went online, applied that night, um. And yeah, that's how my life works. That's how I lived my whole life, so don't be surprised by this. This wasn't just because I was in my twenties.

• 11:42Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take them to get back with you?

• 11:44Sarah Adams?

  Uh, my first interview was, um, the first week of December, it was super quick.

• 11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 11:50Sarah Adams?

  Yep. So it was five weeks.

• 11:52Shawn Ryan?

  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'll think it's like, everybody gets recruited.

• 12:06Sarah Adams?

  I know, it's like, you gotta put an application in.

• 12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, did you put the application in online? No, they have a website? They do have a website.

• 12:17Sarah Adams?

  And it's proven, it works.

• 12:18Shawn Ryan?

  You might not work that well over there if you haven't figured that out yet. But, but anyways, so we have, I would like to talk about 2008.

• 12:30Sarah Adams?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:31Shawn Ryan?

  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?

• 12:40Sarah Adams?

  No, so I was actually at headquarters when Mumbai happened.

• 12:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:44Sarah Adams?

  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, um, Congress reaches out to CIA and they say, what are you gonna do about this big event?

• 13:04Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, hold on. Let's go back.

• 13:07Sarah Adams?

  Yep.

• 13:07Shawn Ryan?

  What's, what was the event in Mumbai?

• 13:10Sarah Adams?

  So Mumbai, there was, there was like, um, a terrorist attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba. 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 it at like a hotel and, you know, it, 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 gonna do about these attackers? Because the Indians were 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 gonna do going forward on this?

• 13:53Sarah Adams?

  So I was on the team that covered, um, I think I was the actually only person on that terrorist group at the time. I mean, the Pakistani terrorist groups just don't get a lot of focus.

• 14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Um, why is that?

• 14:05Sarah Adams?

  I don't know. I think it's because they don't all do things with Al Qaeda.

• 14:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:12Sarah Adams?

  So if they then eventually join up with Al Qaeda, so there is a really famous one named Elias Kashmiri. 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 target and then I don't think he even lived a year. You know, because he then moved over to that realm and Al Qaeda is, was our focus.

• 14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:35Sarah Adams?

  You know, it's like Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda. You know, maybe TTP, maybe Taliban, and then the Pakistan terror groups were not even on the list.

• 14:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:48Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, so they, they just weren't prioritized at all.

• 14:52Sarah Adams?

  So what happened is Congress then came to CIA and said, do something about it. And in my shop, my boss had decided to actually just choose a random terrorist camp and say it was Lashkri Taiba and have his character 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's stuff, right? There's a lot of garbage that comes in the CIA, 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?

• 15:37Sarah Adams?

  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. I submitted it to her. So I submitted it to her like on a Friday. So the next week I went to a week of training. So you know, most CIA training is offsite. So I was offsite in a different part of town. And it was the end of that next week and, and, and I, 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.

• 16:21Sarah Adams?

  She actually went to DOD Detailie because she thought she could get the Department of Defense person to lie 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 because 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 counterterrorism 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 analyst boss um on the Osama bin Laden raid, so he's like in the movie and stuff for um Zero Dark Thirty.

• 17:04Sarah Adams?

  He luckily said, okay, I'm gonna assign 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, 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 of years later I found out she was one of our bosses in our Yemen drone shop. Right? I mean, that's very dangerous.

• 17:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Sarah Adams?

  She was willing to lie about a location in Pakistan to appease like a congressperson 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 as you've seen.

• 17:52Shawn Ryan?

  There was a ton of drone strikes in Yemen.

• 17:55Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 17:58Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 18:10Shawn Ryan?

  Makes you wonder how many of those drone strikes were legit.

• 18:13Sarah Adams?

  Oh, yeah, I have a lot of questions about Yemen. At least under her watch.

• 18:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding. How long was she in Yemen doing that for?

• 18:21Sarah Adams?

  I mean, usually rotate for two or three years to a job at CIA.

• 18:25Shawn Ryan?

  So what, what is the point of, what does she get out of this?

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, so she makes what Congress happy? What?

• 18:35Sarah Adams?

  I know.

• 18:35Shawn Ryan?

  What is the point?

• 18:36Sarah Adams?

  I honestly didn't understand the point of it.

• 18:38Shawn Ryan?

  I guess she did get a promotion. Was that the point?

• 18:41Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, but she was in CIA long enough to where she was gonna get a promotion anyway. I know this sounds depressing, but you know, in the government, you go to a point and they move you to the next level. Unfortunately, even if you're good or not. So, yeah, I really don't get it. 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 irrational actor. Like, how do you, how do you get to that level? Because you wouldn't have thought of doing it. I mean, maybe it's just a thought, well, they're terrorists anyway.

• 19:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Sarah Adams?

  But, you know, there's still, there's still laws, right? I mean, we still need to have some sort of justification, obviously.

• 19:22Shawn Ryan?

  How many, how many times do you think that was going on, just in?

• 19:26Sarah Adams?

  Luckily, I don't think it happened a lot in Pakistan, because, right? A lot of things were nominated out of my office, and there was really good people there, 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. And it's like, it's odd she picked the one Department of Defense person that she thought would put it out. That made me concerned.

• 19:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, picking on the, uh, Moser Junior, vulnerable.

• 19:56Sarah Adams?

  And does that mean like, yeah, because DOD does it?

• 19:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's, uh, you know, we were 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. It's just...

• 20:20Speaker 01

  FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment. With the iconic horrors you love to fear, and an all-star cast reprising fan favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu.

• 20:50Shawn Ryan?

  There's so much to dive into and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for what we've been doing.

• 20:57Sarah Adams?

  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 gonna do it, you know? And 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 write me up. She actually did a lot of things against me. She canceled like a TDY I had to a war zone, which made me look really bad. Even the write-up, she started the write-up for me and then I ended up getting like a 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."

• 21:38Sarah Adams?

  But yeah, it actually affected my career for a short time because she was then using it against me, you know, for the next probably year or so. And then finally, I got out from her office. But that's the thing in the CIA. A lot of people don't understand is, there's not really a human resources department. 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." So it's all those personalities can really affect your career. As you can imagine, you can get really held back for things.

• 22:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's talk about Pakistan. When you were informed of the coast bombing in December 2009, Kent Chapman attack, it was a double agent suicide bomber, seven CIA personnel killed. I had friends killed in that.

• 22:38Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, I know. You too.

• 22:41Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know, do you know a lot about what went on there?

• 22:43Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, the crazy part is, is, well, the day I found out that you're first bringing up, I, um, I was in another city in Pakistan and I flew in and I just came into the office. So I knew nothing, right? Because it's not like we share things, as you know, over your cellphones 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 trouble. 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 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 a shower.

• 23:28Sarah Adams?

  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 in 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 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.

• 24:10Sarah Adams?

  Al Qaeda uses them in joint 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, we're going to do a double agent, um, and ended 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 Zawahiri and is going to go need to see. Zawahiri, so Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri 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

• 24:54Sarah Adams?

  and, you know, thing. So it was a huge deal. It was probably the biggest operation at 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 Zawahiri 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 9/11. He was involved in the planning post. He led Benghazi. And he gets ignored all the time.

• 25:36Sarah Adams?

  And to be honest, until I see Al Qaeda eulogize him, I'm having a hard time believing he's dead. Because he does ruses. He plays games. He knows how to mess with us, and he's dangerous.

• 25:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So where is he, do you think?

• 25:53Sarah Adams?

  So, well, supposedly last summer, we killed him in a drone strike in Kabul. So, um, what, what seems to have happened is, and, and all this really kind of lines up. So he was staying at a house owned by Siraj Hadeen Hakani. And Siraj Hadeen Hakani and the Hakani's have long been suspected of probably being the people who housed Zawahiri, the whole time using Waziristan, as you can imagine, because they had such a power base there. So anyway, he, he, he goes to Kabul reportedly, and he's in this house of Hakani's. 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.

• 26:37Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting. Where do you think he might be?

• 26:42Sarah Adams?

  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 gonna come up, but why isn't the real one coming up?

• 26:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how long does it usually take for him to eulogize somebody?

• 27:02Sarah Adams?

  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 de facto. So it's like Saif al-Awluq. 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 heir to Osama bin Laden is alive in Afghanistan too. But he doesn't want to be the leader of al Qaeda. So it's unclear what role he's playing. So yeah, so al Qaeda hasn't actually made clear like this is our Emir, which is interesting.

• 27:47Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on, we reported Bin Laden's son was killed in 2019.

• 27:51Sarah Adams?

  Correct.

• 27:51Shawn Ryan?

  When did we or you find out that he was still alive?

• 27:57Sarah Adams?

  Um, last September, his brother came to Afghanistan to visit him.

• 28:03Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know that?

• 28:04Sarah Adams?

  Because his brother came to Afghanistan to visit him.

• 28:08Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. All right. I'll stop asking questions.

• 28:16Shawn Ryan?

  We'll have that conversation off camera.

• 28:24Shawn Ryan?

  Now I gotta re, hold on, now I gotta just readjust my thoughts because I would love to dive into that. But let's go to, let's go to January 2010. Led the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Buraidar. Did I say that correct?

• 28:43Sarah Adams?

  Yes. So, I mean, um, again, um, you know, if you've seen my book, this is known. Mullah Buraidar, 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 off sec.

• 29:14Sarah Adams?

  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, stop me in one of our big meetings that we had weekly. And he said, Sarah, why are you still briefing this? You're never gonna get mullah berater on a phone. Like, he said it in front of the whole station, right? And I was like, huh, 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 beraters. And he actually, like, was refusing to collect on them.

• 29:56Sarah Adams?

  And then a mayor 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 collected 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, berater 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 gonna see if we can get a capture going. And so, um, I went to the leaders in Islamabad.

• 30:41Sarah Adams?

  And, um, the crazy part was, is, did you ever hear about, like, the COS conference?

• 30:48Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't.

• 30:48Sarah Adams?

  Okay, there's this time of the year, I know, I, it's probably the time changes every year, 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 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 berater. And 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 teams sit and I said, hey, I need two guys to go to Karachi. And they said, yeah, we got, like, two in Lahore, we'll move them from that. And then, um, and then I booked a flight and I went straight down there. And then, um,

• 31:32Sarah Adams?

  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 our capture was. But the phone's in Quetta. So I said, OK, let's just capture him in Quetta. The phone's up in Quetta. Why would we wait till he comes to Karachi? So I called the boss in Quetta. And did you ever see like Gone in 60 Seconds? And there he had Eleanor?

• 31:58Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 31:59Sarah Adams?

  So like, it was the car he never could get. And and something always went wrong with it. So our boss in Quetta had a had a terrorist like that. He was like a like a deputy shadow governor for Helmand. He was like the shadow governor for a really famous Taliban commander named Mullah Naim Barich. And I think his name was like Taher Shah. And he was in town that day. And this guy tried to get Taher Shah 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 call him. He's like, Taher Shah is in town. And I said, dude, I'm saying Barader. And he's like, I don't think it's really Barader. He's like, I'm gonna go for Taher Shah and then I'll go for Barader if we don't get Shah.

• 32:42Sarah Adams?

  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 Barader 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 Barader rode to another city with his phone and rode back. So I said, his kid has the phone. Now we can only capture him at home. Because, 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 uh, we we did the capture operation. So we just got really lucky. His kid stole old phone out of the closet and brought on a trip with his dad.

• 33:25Shawn Ryan?

  And this is the, this is the co-founder of the Taliban?

• 33:28Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, he was he was number two at the time of the Taliban. Yeah, but he is one of the founders. Yeah.

• 33:34Shawn Ryan?

  How old was he?

• 33:35Sarah Adams?

  Maybe 55. It's really hard to tell.

• 33:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Sarah Adams?

  But I guess probably about 55.

• 33:40Shawn Ryan?

  So how long?

• 33:44Shawn Ryan?

  What is the, what is the process like when you want to do a strike or a capture?

• 33:49Sarah Adams?

  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 COS and get approval. Well, my COS was gone.

• 34:12Shawn Ryan?

  COS is chief of station. That will be the head agency officer in charge of the entire country.

• 34:18Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, so I would, you would, I would go to him, especially at 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 Burayder lived. And then that COB 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 Burayder.

• 34:49Shawn Ryan?

  How, how long does it normally take? Let's say they're not on the top 10 list.

• 34:53Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 35:00Shawn Ryan?

  Months.

• 35:01Sarah Adams?

  If, you know, if you've never got approval to go after a guy, yeah.

• 35:04Shawn Ryan?

  What are the most, what are your strikes usually? Are they captures? Are they drone strikes? Or they send it in teams?

• 35:12Sarah Adams?

  Depends on what you're working. So I was working Taliban, so we didn't really have lethal approvals on Taliban. Maybe we had a Mullah 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 a drone strike, but we really couldn't anyway. They were in Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar. You know, it wasn't like they were in Waziristan.

• 35:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Sarah Adams?

  Al Qaeda, most of those targets, obviously the, the attempt was drone strikes because of the locations of the country they were in. But if they're in the subtle areas, obviously like Lahore or something, you'd have to capture them.

• 35:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so when you're, so as a targeter, you're attached to a certain group?

• 35:58Sarah Adams?

  Correct.

• 35:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 36:00Sarah Adams?

  Or it can depend. 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 Karachi. So it could be Al Qaeda, it could be Shia groups, i- i- it didn't matter. It could be organized crime. So I did any targeting Karachi.

• 36:22Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. What's it feel like when you get these guys?

• 36:26Sarah Adams?

  It was pretty exciting. The interesting part was that 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 crap. 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. Cause as you know, a lot of sources in Afghanistan fed us a bunch of garbage, got paid for it. And then they worked for three other intelligence agencies. So, so yeah, I mean, i- it was good to get him. Um, in retrospect though, I realized right away that they wanted him for,

• 37:11Sarah Adams?

  I wanted to get him because he was number two of 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.

• 37:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:25Sarah Adams?

  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 was Richard Holbrook and his goal was to do Taliban reconciliation. Um, and their main focus and they had made some assessment and the only way they could reconcile was with the Taliban was to use Mullah Baratar. 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?

• 38:10Sarah Adams?

  Like, I mean, we would list off names of countries. Would you be okay if Japan came? The Brits came? 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 gonna make a deal with the Taliban, and we're gonna give part of the government back to the Taliban. I didn't think it was gonna 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.

• 38:41Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 38:43Sarah Adams?

  Swear to God.

• 38:44Shawn Ryan?

  So this plan, this goes way back.

• 38:47Sarah Adams?

  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 Islamabad. Well, we flew back up from Karachi. And he brought me and then the other guy who were gonna be the lead debriefers. 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 Brooke guy. Um, they want to take it over from Islamabad Station. They don't even want you guys debriefing him. Um, so he fought for us to debrief him, but they pulled everything. They sent a psychiatrist out to watch our sessions and make sure we had rapport with him. I kid you not. They made sure his detainee debriefers had rapport with him.

• 39:31Sarah Adams?

  Like, they were already kissing his butt right after we caught him. So, yeah. And so he ended up, uh, 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 terrorists I met. I know that sounds really bad. Because 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. Because 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.

• 40:13Sarah Adams?

  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. So I see the logic. Um, like, one of the things is, um, right after the fall. So the US went in after nine eleven and they beat the Taliban in like five weeks. I mean, it was amazing. Like, rah rah, USA. I mean, they really kicked ass. They toppled the Taliban. So Taliban basically all went home. So, um, Mullah Braider, in my theory, first took Mullah Omar and he hit him. So he hit him in a ruse gun and Mullah Omar, I don't think ever left there. Braider went home to like the home his dad owns.

• 40:57Sarah Adams?

  And, and they were like, we lost, we're done. Well, as you know, Bin Laden crossed Tora Bora 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 Bin Laden's gone. What are we gonna do? So they decided, we're gonna 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 bombed Braider'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 bombed my house. And they actually injured his dad, so that didn't help.

• 41:40Sarah Adams?

  Um, and then that's when he triggered over and said, okay, game's on, Taliban's back, like, you didn't win. And that's when he went full back in.

• 41:50Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 41:51Sarah Adams?

  Right, so when he tells, he tells that story, I'm like, heck yeah, you come and bomb my dad. I'm in. Um, so, so yeah, he would always have like a good story like that. So I can see how he would meet with US policymakers and be very persuasive. Um, especially because 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.

• 42:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, we're funding them again, right?

• 42:23Sarah Adams?

  I think we send like forty million dollars a week.

• 42:26Shawn Ryan?

  Forty million dollars a week goes to Taliban.

• 42:29Sarah Adams?

  Yes.

• 42:30Shawn Ryan?

  Who are taking our allies, lining them up like dogs.

• 42:36Sarah Adams?

  Yep.

• 42:37Shawn Ryan?

  And shooting them in the back of the head.

• 42:39Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Shawn Ryan?

  And we're funding that.

• 42:40Sarah Adams?

  And that's kind of what you hope they do. I mean, I've got videos that are very, very painful deaths.

• 42:46Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of deaths?

• 42:47Sarah Adams?

  Torture deaths, some really bad, um, beheading deaths of our allies, you know?

• 42:53Shawn Ryan?

  These are all the guys we used to work with over there.

• 42:55Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, a lot of, a lot of the people who worked with them get the video sent to them af- during or after. To 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.

• 43:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I, I, uh, interviewed, do you know Tyler Vargas Andrews by chance?

• 43:31Sarah Adams?

  We haven't met in person, but I'm in the Moral Compass Federation and he's in the Federation with us.

• 43:35Shawn Ryan?

  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 sending me videos and, and cell phone clips of what they were doing and.

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• 45:00Shawn Ryan?

  I wish I could post it on here, you know, or 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 an 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.

• 45:28Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, they don't put it 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."

• 45:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Yep. Yeah.

• 45:49Sarah Adams?

  Well, you know, it's funny you bring it up, because we were just talking, we were talking about India, and you know, the bomber that Tyler had his eyes on was captured in India.

• 45:58Shawn Ryan?

  Did he?

• 45:59Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Shawn Ryan?

  I did not know that.

• 46:00Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, so, so in 2017 ISIS deployed him to do attack in New Delhi, 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 on the 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 Bagram. So he was in Bagram from 2017 until July 1st, when we snuck out in the middle of the night, July 1st,

• 46:40Sarah Adams?

  um, 2021, we left in the middle of the night, didn't tell the commander of Bagram we were leaving. He comes in the morning and the Taliban and terrorists are breaking all the prisoners out. That's when he got a 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, of 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 because I just got people into the Kabul Airport.

• 47:23Sarah Adams?

  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 transfer, translate the name on the picture and it says Logari. And so I write 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 tried 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 Kabul 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, because usually you don't know the bomber. They just take some low level guy and, you know.

• 48:06Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 48:15Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 48:16Sarah Adams?

  It's crazy.

• 48:17Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well.

• 48:19Shawn Ryan?

  What do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about? I want to go into the Afghan withdrawal.

• 48:25Sarah Adams?

  Go anything you want to.

• 48:26Shawn Ryan?

  I want to go into Benghazi.

• 48:27Sarah Adams?

  I'll drink some water.

• 48:28Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, uh, let's take a quick break.

• 48:30Sarah Adams?

  Okay.

• 48:31Shawn Ryan?

  When we come back, I think we'll pick up. Since we're on the subject, let's go into the withdrawal. All right, Sarah, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into the Afghan withdrawal. I've covered this with Scott Mann before, who I know you know, Scott. Covered it with Tyler Andrew Vargas, uh, or some, sorry, Tyler Vargas Andrews. But, um, I'd love to hear, I'm

• 48:56Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 49:05Sarah Adams?

  You know, I think one of the things I could add on top of what they've covered,

• 49:11Sarah Adams?

  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? Where 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.

• 49:53Sarah Adams?

  And so even when I find they got a family to that gate after the, um, the suicide bombing, it was a State Department person running the CIA gate.

• 50:04Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 50:05Sarah Adams?

  Yep. So they were like basically preventing the CIA from bringing their own people in.

• 50:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think we didn't want to save our own people?

• 50:12Sarah Adams?

  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 gonna get away with it. I think they just wanted to leave and be done. They never expected twenty years of veterans or intel officers that worked in the country, or even just NGOs who had support of the country. We're gonna 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 gonna say, hey, we left one hundred Americans behind, but now you had all these volunteer groups with large lists of people

• 50:54Sarah Adams?

  able to tally up their Americans and say, hey, we went across all the groups and it looks like eight thousand Americans are left behind. US government, how are you getting away with saying we only left one hundred 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.

• 51:31Shawn Ryan?

  I haven't.

• 51:32Sarah Adams?

  So it was basically gonna be, it is, a partnership between the government and all these NGOs. 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 wanna play with this game. Like, Afghan Evac kind of just talks what State Department wants in 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.

• 52:14Shawn Ryan?

  So it's a cover.

• 52:15Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, as they drag out the evac, it is a cover to drag out the evac, one hundred percent. 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.

• 52:36Shawn Ryan?

  Can you go over some of the, like, what's happening there now? You still have a really good footprint in Afghanistan as far as what's happening.

• 52:44Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 52:45Shawn Ryan?

  And so, you know, I've talked to some of the Northern Alliance guys.

• 52:51Sarah Adams?

  Uh huh.

• 52:51Shawn Ryan?

  Um, and they're talking, you know, I had always had

• 52:58Shawn Ryan?

  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, 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?

• 53:42Sarah Adams?

  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, Mullah Baradar, who again is the person who 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 Uyghurs, you know, on the Uyghurs, um, pass it to us. So it's really interesting.

• 54:26Sarah Adams?

  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 counterterrorism force. Um, the people China are doing abuses against, the Taliban 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.

• 54:56Sarah Adams?

  Has been stronger than the US Taliban relationship, at least since 2009, for sure. So of course, 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.

• 55:16Shawn Ryan?

  They're the first ones.

• 55:16Sarah Adams?

  I think they're the first ones, yeah.

• 55:18Shawn Ryan?

  Are they the only ones?

• 55:19Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, everyone else has these weird envoys, but I believe that's the first designated ambassadorial position.

• 55:27Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 55:49Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 56:13Shawn Ryan?

  Can you talk a little bit about the Northern Alliance and what's going on with them right now?

• 56:17Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, I can talk a little bit about the Northern Alliance. The, 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 Ahmad Shah Masood, um, and he was the key US ally before 9/11. The really interesting thing is, and we talk about it in our book, is, you know, he was assassinated, of course. Well, the individual who provided the two Tunisian suicide bombers to him...

• 56:47Sarah Adams?

  Provided attackers to Zawahiri for the Benghazi attacks too. Right, the guy's still in play. And I like to try to tell people, this is still all connected, right? I mean, I know Masud's son comes up as a connection. It's like, no, even the same terrorists are still in the circle as when Ahmad Shah and Masud was in power. And I feel the northern resistance is trying to tell that to people, right? Like, these are still the same 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 domestic war or a tribal war. And it's like, no, those are foreign terrorists. They're fighting Al Qaeda. At this point, so many terrorists are pouring in to Afghanistan as well.

• 57:32Sarah Adams?

  And the really interesting part is, Al Qaeda has adopted, like adapted, I mean. So they learned something, I think, from Benghazi. So when Al Qaeda 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. Because, you know, like you bring in an Egyptian into Benghazi, it doesn't always go well, right? Because locals are like, ah, Egyptians. So they decided, we're going to appoint the locals. So now, Al Qaeda is doing that in Afghanistan. So for each province that Al Qaeda is making commanders for,

• 58:16Sarah Adams?

  a lot of them, they're taking Taliban members and making them the Al Qaeda commander. So the two things that works for 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 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 already found 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 100 Bengazis, it almost feels like.

• 58:56Shawn Ryan?

  Man, they're smart.

• 58:58Sarah Adams?

  They are. 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... Headbutting.

• 59:10Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 59:21Sarah Adams?

  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 Northern Alliance. And then there's kind of like the Sadats, you know, like 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 posture, 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.

• 1:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  They're gonna need to unite.

• 1:00:07Sarah Adams?

  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 terrorists stronger by putting them all together. So they took like by Tulam Asud's group, Abdullah Asud's, Gul Bahadur's and Fakir Mohammed's. And they said, okay, you all go under the 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. He didn't do it when he wanted to do, but Ansal Asharia Benghazi started doing it.

• 1:00:49Sarah Adams?

  And then later on, they followed Bin Laden's plan and they actually made another organization that did follow Bin Laden's plan and report to Al Qaeda. But when Ansal Asharia Benghazi was set up, and that was one of 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 Ansal Asharia Benghazi, he's AQIM. Cause it's an umbrella organization. You can be any terrorist group under the Ansal Asharia banner. And, um, Al Qaeda's 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? Even the Haqqanis are involved in those discussions.

• 1:01:32Sarah Adams?

  One of our terrorists that we found recently that had been in Gitmo, he's still in Libya. He's having those discussions with the Haqqanis 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.

• 1:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:01:53Sarah Adams?

  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 terrorists out from those training camps to all the future jihad. First, it was Syria, but then wherever it would become. So they've now shifted that to Afghanistan. So Afghanistan now, they're gonna put, I don't know what the exact thing is, but basically at least one training camp in each province. And so they're gonna train all the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan. And then they're gonna deploy them from Afghanistan to the different groups. And the really interesting part is, the terrorist who moved all of our attackers

• 1:02:37Sarah Adams?

  that left our attacks out of Libya after the attacks, he's sitting in Kabul. So basically, Al Qaeda's best terrorist facilitator is in Kabul, because that's their plan.

• 1:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Why do you think so many foreign terrorists are converging in on Afghanistan?

• 1:02:57Sarah Adams?

  Because it's safe.

• 1:02:59Shawn Ryan?

  Because we're not there.

• 1:03:00Sarah Adams?

  Yeah. So even one of our most recent ones, I'm assuming he's a high-value target in Libya. He was a very high target value when we were in Pakistan. He now goes to Afghanistan, there's no more drone strikes. He can live a lot safer. So, of course, they're gonna move there. And remember, that's not where the training camp infrastructure is gonna be. And they want to support that.

• 1:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think China is going to aid them in future attacks on us?

• 1:03:32Sarah Adams?

  Hmm, I think they're for sure gonna turn a blind eye. I think they're gonna ride this for as long as they can. I don't think China's stupid. I'm not sure if China thinks Taliban's gonna be ruling 10 years from now. But I think China's like, let's position ourselves for whatever that fallout's gonna look like. I think that's more what China's thinking.

• 1:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think China's gonna be ruling over there in 10 years?

• 1:03:56Sarah Adams?

  I'm not entirely sure.

• 1:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  They already are, it sounds like, you know, but...

• 1:04:01Sarah Adams?

  So...

• 1:04:03Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's... So what is Taliban's relationship with the US now? Are we...

• 1:04:11Sarah Adams?

  According to an op-ed in the Washington Post today, the CIA shares intelligence with the Taliban. So we have an official intelligence-sharing relationship with the Taliban.

• 1:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I just... I can't believe...

• 1:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  It doesn't even seem real, does it?

• 1:04:32Sarah Adams?

  I can barely take it every single day.

• 1:04:40Sarah Adams?

  Especially with just how many Al Qaeda members are currently in Afghanistan. The thing is, we know Benghazi was covered up, that Al Qaeda led the attack, right?

• 1:04:53Sarah Adams?

  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 in Afghanistan. I'm sorry, I feel like people are like, we've done this for 20 years. No, like, we're gonna say something, we're gonna report it if you don't, or if the press doesn't. Like, I do think people need to step up now. 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 gonna do the right thing, then everybody who has contacts in Afghanistan needs to be putting the information out.

• 1:05:27Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you think... So they're doing all this training and stuff in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and all these international terrorists. You think... They're gonna start coming up through our southern borders?

• 1:05:37Sarah Adams?

  Oh, they've already started.

• 1:05:39Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know that for a fact?

• 1:05:40Sarah Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:05:40Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know that?

• 1:05:41Sarah Adams?

  I know that because I was told several different times about group pockets of terrorists. So like six, eight, um, there was one larger one, maybe twenty-five to fifty. I think it was fifty, 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 Darien Pass. Um, the, I forget if it was twenty-five or fifty, sorry. That was a Connie network.

• 1:06:24Sarah Adams?

  Their goal was, they get, obviously, they're a Connie network, they run the Ministry of Interior, so they all got the passports. Um, their goal was Turkey to Brazil. I mean, the, the key is Brazil. Um, and then Al Qaeda has also sent, um, attackers on the same routes. And-

• 1:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  Why is Brazil a key?

• 1:06:46Sarah Adams?

  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 Darien Pass.

• 1:06:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:00Sarah Adams?

  The Darien Pass is the focus. The Darien Pass is where they're all going through. The Darien Pass is your choke point.

• 1:07:06Shawn Ryan?

  Where is that?

• 1:07:07Sarah Adams?

  It's kind of like in Panama.

• 1:07:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:10Sarah Adams?

  And, um, it's super dangerous. Like, if ten Afghans go in, maybe six come out.

• 1:07:16Shawn Ryan?

  Really? Why is that?

• 1:07:17Sarah Adams?

  Um, there is murders, rapes, robberies, animal attacks. Like, I seriously know someone who told me that an Afghan died by like a, 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, there's a lot of torture and abuse.

• 1:07:44Shawn Ryan?

  So what, hold on, what is, why is it so dangerous there? This is a section of Panama?

• 1:07:48Sarah Adams?

  I think, because so many criminals maybe are going through it.

• 1:07:51Shawn Ryan?

  It's just a, it's, it's just extreme poverty?

• 1:07:54Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, I think, it's just like, it's the jungle. Right? It's like, kind of a real wild, wild west.

• 1:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:03Sarah Adams?

  Um-

• 1:08:05Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 1:08:13Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:08:14Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's it's the easiest country to infiltrate.

• 1:08:18Sarah Adams?

  Brazil is, yes.

• 1:08:19Shawn Ryan?

  For the beginning of their journey.

• 1:08:20Sarah Adams?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:08:31Sarah Adams?

  I don't know, because like last year, I thought there was like 20 in a month or something. I feel like maybe in this year was like 100 or so. I don't know the exact number. I know we're missing a lot.

• 1:08:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, that these are only who we've caught and, I mean.

• 1:08:46Sarah Adams?

  And who we have biometrics for.

• 1:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:49Sarah Adams?

  Right? Because if we don't have their biometrics in our system, how do we know where they're terrorists? We don't even know where 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 watched listed. It doesn't even probably have an ethnicity. If you're Pakistani and you went and got a passport from the Taliban, you're not, they think, assume you're an Afghan.

• 1:09:13Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good point. Have they have we interrogated anybody that they have caught crossing the border?

• 1:09:19Sarah Adams?

  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.

• 1:09:25Shawn Ryan?

  Are you aware of any of the motivations?

• 1:09:30Sarah Adams?

  I I just have not seen any debriefings. And luckily, I have not known a terrorist that's come over, thank heavens.

• 1:09:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. All right. All right.

• 1:09:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, is there anything else that we want to cover when it comes to the Afghan withdrawal?

• 1:09:47Sarah Adams?

  Okay, good, unless you had something.

• 1:09:48Shawn Ryan?

  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 Yunus Al Maritani.

• 1:10:02Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, so that was an interesting time because 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 gonna 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. Because Pakistan, you know, in retaliation, stopped issuing visas. So they went to the targeting community and said, who still has visas? And a long, long time ago, the Pakistanis issued tenure. And then it went to five year, and then it went just your trip. So I had a five year. Um, there was one girl that was now like kind of part time CIA.

• 1:10:46Sarah Adams?

  She married like a JSOC officer. So she wasn't at headquarters anymore. She had a tenure. And then Maya, who caught Bin Laden, had a tenure. The funny part is, the three of us volunteered. So they sent all those staff officers home from Islamabad. And Maya, who all of ISI knew got Bin Laden. She volunteered to go back to Pakistan. So they're all whims, right? Because she was like, I'll go back.

• 1:11:12Sarah Adams?

  So they didn't take her. It was, they're unfortunately, um, she's a little bit of a tough character. I like her, but the boss, the female boss, didn't want to 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 Yunus Maritani, so he was the Al Qaeda 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 Sheikh Mohammed, who did 9/11. He's kind of like the C team, you know?

• 1:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Sarah Adams?

  Um, so it's kind of like, this is not who we got. Um, so he was in charge of any. External plotting for core Al Qaeda of Pakistan. And we got information that he was gonna leave Pakistan to go to Africa. And my assumption is maybe like Libya at the time, just because of the year, it was 2011. Um, and then he was gonna plan attacks in Europe from Africa. It was him and his cell, they were gonna 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 gonna 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,

• 1:12:39Sarah Adams?

  but they're not all bad, but this is, sorry, sorry CIA. So I go to chief of liaison and I say, hey, can you call ISI and see if we can go capture Eunice?

• 1:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, ISI is the Pakistani's version of CIA.

• 1:12:53Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, inter-services intelligence. Um, they have a bunch of different directorates. The CIA works with like their counter-terrorism directorate. So that's who we're talking to when we talk to them as a partner, if that makes sense.

• 1:13:06Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 1:13:07Sarah Adams?

  Um, so I go over, I said, call ISI so we can go capture Eunice. 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 Al Qaeda.

• 1:13:52Sarah Adams?

  So anyway.

• 1:13:53Shawn Ryan?

  This is our US government.

• 1:13:54Sarah Adams?

  I couldn't, I honestly.

• 1:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  This is how it is. Everybody needs to hear this.

• 1:13:59Sarah Adams?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:14:00Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody needs to hear this.

• 1:14:02Sarah Adams?

  He went and played tennis. Um, so I go back into the targeting shop and everyone's like, how'd it go? Like, kinda making fun of me. And I said, yeah, the jerk doesn't even have ISI's 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's 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 wanna 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.

• 1:14:47Sarah Adams?

  Cause 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, cause 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 of 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 Directorate, so I didn't know who he was. And we, we start the conversation and, um, I tell them about Eunice. And at the time, he had like four or five terrorists traveling with him.

• 1:15:29Sarah Adams?

  And then the, the guy, you know, he, he listens and he's like, you know, we'd be interested, but we're really upset about Bin Laden. And he kinda goes through the spiel. And then he goes, like, hey, if you handshake with me, that you'll tell us if you're gonna go get Ivan Alzarrihiri.

• 1:15:50Sarah Adams?

  In Pakistan, we'll do it. And, and so, so, yeah, like, cause I just thought he would say, "You did this with Bin Laden, we're not gonna do work with you." That's why I think the whole conversation's going, and he asked for a handshake. Well, luckily, I'm not gonna 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 Zawahiri. So I said, "Hey, I know we're not about to capture Zawahiri in Pakistan." And so, and I shook his hand, which was so funny, cause I had no authority to shake his hand, and he said, "Okay." And then we started planning for the operation. It was one meeting with ISI to get them to restart capture operations.

• 1:16:27Shawn Ryan?

  Man, and you triggered it.

• 1:16:29Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, and the U, and the US didn't even try it.

• 1:16:32Shawn Ryan?

  Cause old boy's over there playing tennis.

• 1:16:34Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, old boy, yeah, that was a whole nother issue. But yeah, so, yeah, we got Eunis, 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 Eunis, and then like, press came out that like, the head of Al Qaeda in Karachi, who I knew really well, cause I used to be the Karachi targeter, was captured. So I go over, I said, "Hey, this guy was captured." And 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 Karachi, just because we luckily were meeting with ISI again, and he was in their building. And then, um, so, Eunis and team go to southern Pakistan,

• 1:17:14Sarah Adams?

  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 gotta be kidding me, like, this plan is crazy." And, and they jet, and they go back to Waziristan, and like, they like ditch Eunis. And so, all we have is that, um, some guy named Dowd is gonna move him around. Um, this is, this is the part I wanna kinda explain why you always collect information. So, a guy named Dowd is gonna move him, and so I said, "Let's just pick a Dowd." Like, we need a starting point in Kuwait. We, we had no capture team because they stopped captures. So we talked Kabul into sending like a person and their, their tool. And they came over and like, okay, I'll be, I'll be your capture team.

• 1:17:59Sarah Adams?

  So we had a capture team from Kabul. And, um, so we, I said, let's pick Daubah 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 Kuwait. 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 Daub? Did you ever go to his house? He's like, yeah, I've been to his house. We're like, does his family still live there? Because, you know, that was so old, right? The US probably mapped it out in twenty, two thousand two. And he said, yeah, he still lives there. And then we acted like we didn't know where it was and we made them map it.

• 1:18:44Sarah Adams?

  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 because his, his description wasn't good at all. But he was like, how did they find this house from my description? Right? Because he was like, it was down a street, uh, street and there was a school bus. Anyway, so we staged and started that location. Yunus was three blocks from there. He, he was, I doubt that Daub was involved. We took a guess and he was that close to the location that we were able to capture him.

• 1:19:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:19:12Sarah Adams?

  Is that crazy? And it's all because a 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 two thousand two or two thousand three like helped us like do a, a, a starting point.

• 1:19:29Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is amazing.

• 1:19:30Sarah Adams?

  Yeah. And then I do have a funny story. So I dated a Kashmiri for five 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 Yunus and

• 1:20:00Sarah Adams?

  We capture him in the south, as you know, and we're all in Islamabad. So, so they say, oh, it's gonna take us a week to get him up there. It's Eid this week. You can come the week after and start detainee debriefing. So we go back up and of course, our station's like, we gotta confirm they really have Yunus. Headquarters wants a confirmation. So I said, I'm just gonna 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 the main. I say, yeah, we're gonna drive over there. We're gonna be ten, we have a meeting and we're gonna see if Yunus is there. And he's like, this is never gonna work. We're gonna 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 guard tower and he goes like this. I'm like, let us in. And so we get in the ISI compound, we park.

• 1:20:45Sarah Adams?

  No one's anywhere, cuz everyone's off. We walk in the main doors and there's a reception area. No one's working the reception area. And I look at him and I, I knew he was like dreading what I was gonna say. I said, we're going down the detain, the detainee room. So we go down where they do the detainee debriefings. And we walk in the room where the CCT video cameras are and I turn on all the TVs. Yunus is on the TV. A minder walks in the room and shuts the TV off. And then a couple of minutes later, an ISI officer that knows 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 Yunus on camera.

• 1:21:29Sarah Adams?

  He's in Islamabad. And the funny part is, the next week when we went there, I asked that Colonel. I said, what was Yunus 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 Yunus on camera. So.

• 1:21:46Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:21:46Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, so they were spent that whole week debriefing him and pretended he wasn't even in, um, the city yet.

• 1:21:53Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:21:53Sarah Adams?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well.

• 1:21:58Shawn Ryan?

  What was that like when he got back to station? And you told him?

• 1:22:01Sarah Adams?

  Everyone was so excited that it was really Eunice. 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. Cause there was still a lot of nervousness. Is ISI really going to do with this? Are they going to let the guy go? Are they really gonna do this operation with us? But yeah, it was all three of who we wanted to get. We got all three.

• 1:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's amazing.

• 1:22:26Sarah Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Shawn Ryan?

  Great work.

• 1:22:27Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't me. All I had to do was ask him a question.

• 1:22:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, it was you. But let's move into Tripoli. Next on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:22:40Sarah Adams?

  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 Benghazi this little thing on the side that randomly happened when it's a piece of the whole pie.

• 1:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  They want to compartmentalize everything.

• 1:22:55Sarah Adams?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:56Shawn Ryan?

  What was the narrative about this was there was some kind of a cartoon that was made? The Los Angeles Times says the producer of an anti-Islam movie that sparked violent protests across the Middle East is behind bars. Nakula Nakula was arrested Thursday.

• 1:23:10Sarah Adams?

  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?

• 1:23:34Shawn Ryan?

  So Obama, this is while the attack's happening?

• 1:23:38Sarah Adams?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:40Sarah Adams?

  Yeah, he flew to Vegas while the attacks are happening.

• 1:23:42Shawn Ryan?

  So we have a depart-- we have an embassy and a CIA annex under attack. And the President of the United States is flying to Vegas to meet with Beyonce.

• 1:23:53Sarah Adams?

  Yep.

• 1:23:56Shawn Ryan?

  You hear that, everybody?