rant · moment 6 of 18
John Kiriakou, the CIA, and the Loose Origins of Al-Qaeda
from Growing Up Gottschee with Dan St. Germain · #122
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
4 minTim discusses former CIA agent John Kiriakou getting hit by a scooter after criticizing Saudi Arabia, then explains how Al-Qaeda actually formed as a loose arms-dealing network around Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed rather than a tight organization.
- 21:53Tim brings up the State Department being gutted over the past two years and asks if Kiriakou thinks it will have an effect.
- 22:30Tim mentions watching a five-hour Pearl Harbor documentary and reading about the Twin Towers, saying it ruined his perspective on what to believe.
- 23:24Kiriakou explains that any idiot could grab a gun and shoot through a crowd, and he was surprised Al-Qaeda didn't do that more often.
- 23:37A counterterrorism expert supposedly told Kiriakou that after 9-11, Al-Qaeda's financial backers wouldn't fund low-level attacks because they wanted to save money for big plots.
- 23:56Al-Qaeda before it was formalized was just a loose system of people and connections buying weapons from each other.
- 24:16KSM, the guy who was beaten up by interrogators, came to Bin Laden with his own plan to take down 25 planes, and Bin Laden had to scale it back.
- 24:40Al-Qaeda started as a loosely networked group of arms dealers and weapons traders, not primarily religious ideologues.
- 25:07Kiriakou describes how different jihadist groups started fighting amongst themselves when they realized their scripture didn't actually advocate for certain attacks or targets.
- 25:23Kiriakou questions whether a particular general in Iraq actually held as much power as claimed, suggesting the people underneath him might have mattered more.
Al-QaedaState DepartmentOsama bin LadenKhalid Sheikh MohammedAmazon