The War on Terror, Part One - From Cairo to Khost | CIA
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Disclaimer. This episode contains strong language and violent scenes throughout. This is True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in.

You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? I'm Rhianna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. President Obama says he wanted the justice to be brought to this man by the hands of U.S. commandos. He wanted this to go down in a way that American forces came knocking for this individual.

The War on Terror, Part One. From Cairo to Coast. May the 1st, 2011. Langley, Virginia. At CIA headquarters, case officer Aaron Brown waits nervously for updates on a live operation. It is a lot of stress in the entire space. But even for the CIA, the mission is unusual. I knew we were literally in the middle of history as this was playing out.

Two Black Hawk choppers full of Navy SEALs are in Pakistani airspace, headed for a compound. A compound thought to house the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. The place was packed and it was electric with energy and probably more anxiety than positive energy. Some 90 minutes after the team set off, half the world away, Aaron gets an update on their progress.

the primary helicopter over the courtyard, the rotors have stopped moving. It felt like the entire office stopped. In this two-part special, True Spies hears what really went on inside the CIA in the years leading up to one of the most explosive events in espionage history. We walk in and it's the meeting with the director already in progress. And I'm the youngest person in the room by 10 years.

You'll hear how the CIA recruits its officers.

I got a very non-specific phone call with a blocked caller ID and no reference whatsoever to the Central Intelligence Agency, only a reference to I applied for a position and I should know which one we're talking about at this point. And you'll also hear about one of the darkest days in CIA history, an event that put Aaron Brown on the path to that room on that historic day.

For Aaron Brown, this story begins back in 1997.

As a high school graduate, his prospects weren't exactly stellar. Having scraped through his diploma, he was at a loss as for what to do with his life. And I didn't have very many choices. But he knew the tedium of a normal life wasn't for him. I was looking for a space where maybe I could excel. So Aaron aimed straight for the top, the U.S. Army Rangers.

I was the youngest ranger candidate in the class of, I think, a couple hundred. Of which most would drop out. At that time, they called it the ranger indoctrination program. Their job is to really push you to the limit and only select those who have the mental fortitude and ability to go through some pretty tough times and still stick with it.

Even the initial test is too tough for many. 49 push-ups, 59 sit-ups, 6 chin-ups, and a 5-mile run in under 40 minutes. But not for Aaron Brown. He made it in. When you arrive to your ranger battalion, you're arriving to this place that's held a mythical status in your head.

But back in 1997, Rangers folklore seemed to occupy the distant past. No deployment was on the horizon. At that time, the United States was in a state of

what seemed to be never-ending peace. We had a couple of failed conflicts in multiple small countries around the world, namely the tragedy in Mogadishu when Rangers went in in 1993 with 18 U.S. Army soldiers dying from the Ranger Regiment and Delta Force. And those were taken as lessons by the then-President Bill Clinton to not engage in those type of adventures any longer. But in August 1998...

That all looked set to change. In ranger school, you generally don't have access to news or outside information except through letters and phone calls from time to time. Bursting into the barracks, an instructor breaks the news. A terrorist group just blew up our embassies. Al-Qaeda had bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people.

And of course, for the Ranger Regiment, this is immediately a mission we see coming down the pike. Something's going to happen here. But it proved a false start. Aaron and his fellow Rangers weren't deployed anywhere. Instead, President Clinton ordered strikes on al-Qaeda positions in Sudan and Afghanistan. You can hear all about the reasons why, and the whole story of al-Qaeda, in True Spy's three-part special, The Bin Laden Files.

While there was no action on the horizon, a military trip to Egypt piqued Aaron's interest. Visiting a place and culture so alien to his American upbringing stunned the 20-year-old soldier, so much so that he knew he wanted to learn more.

I also wanted to study the culture, the history and all that. I remember thinking very clearly, the United States military is not going into a conflict. The Rangers aren't going to be used to do any of these missions we've trained for.

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Join Walmart in shouting out your favorite black-led products, creating a new world of choices at walmart.com slash black and unlimited. In November 2000, Aaron left the military and enrolled for a bachelor's in international relations. Less than a year later, those relations changed forever. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. Make no mistake, the United States government

will hunt down and punish those responsible. Much like many of my colleagues who had been early studiers of al-Qaeda, it was pretty clear to us that this was a coordinated and directed attack. Having left the army less than a year earlier, Aaron wrestled with whether or not to go straight back in. Because this was quite a bit different than bombing two embassies in Africa.

Aaron asks his former Rangers commanding officer what to do. And he said, I think there's going to be a long conflict and you have the opportunity to join it at other points that might be even more important. So why don't you stay the course where you are right now and study airbic?

It helped me make a decision at that point that clearly proved to be an absolutely integral decision to my life. Aaron stays in school. I decided I was going to make understanding the region and its people and the origins of these attacks and Al-Qaeda, I was going to make that my goal as a student. And so I put together a number of courses and then added a study abroad of one year in Egypt and Cairo at the American University.

Set for the next year, 2003. He's the only student on the course. A number of my friends were definitely concerned for my mental well-being and my physical safety because this did not seem to be a good idea at that time. Meanwhile, Ranger Regiment, including many of Aaron's old buddies, are already in Afghanistan.

And on March 3rd, 2002, he gets word of them. Around 3 a.m. in the morning in my college house, my phone starts ringing incessantly. I pick it up and it is another individual from Ranger Regiment who got out just slightly after I did. And he says to me, Aaron, you're not going to believe it. Brad and Mark were just killed in combat. Brad Crose and Mark Anderson, two of Aaron's closest colleagues in the unit. I was like that.

That seems impossible. And he said, Brad Crose was a teammate and a team leader and took over the team when I left. And Mark Anderson was my assistant gunner. Aaron learns that two Chinook helicopters carrying units from the U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 had approached Takurgar Mountain, a strategically crucial peak offering near total control of the valley below. It's snowing, low visibility.

Having received the all clear, the SEALs prepare to touch down and secure the site. As the first of the Chinooks flares to land though... They encounter some resistance. An RPG round hits just behind the cockpit, starting a fire in the cabin. Another hits the right side radar pod, blowing out all electrical power to the helicopter.

Taking evasive action, the pilot tilts the Chinook to one side. Such that a Navy SEAL by the name of Neil Roberts falls out of the back and lands in the snow and tops of these mountains, and he survives. With the pilot losing control, though, he has no choice but to abandon the area, crash landing in the valley. After encountering similarly heavy fire, the second Navy SEAL Chinook also evacuates the area. And so they leave him there.

And they call back to Special Operations Command at that point, and they ask for the quick reaction force to be activated to go rescue Neil Roberts. Well, as history would have it, that unit ended up being my platoon. Approaching the mountain, the unit sees the visibility has gotten even worse. They're having a hard time figuring out exactly where they are in relationship to where Neil Roberts is.

The first Chinook lands, but not where it should have. The tail of the helicopter, the ramp from which the Rangers are going to exit, comes down facing the enemy element. Heavy machine gun and RPG fire rips through the cabin. Brad and Mark are still inside. And both of them were killed before they got off the helicopter. The second half of the quick reaction force, or QRF, is called in.

Then another member of my gun team picked up that machine gun, got off the aircraft, ran into enemy fire and started firing back at the enemy. Eventually, the second QRF Chinook lands, some 600 meters below the peak, in a meter of snow. They had to walk up. So arduous was that walk. So deep was the snow that halfway up, the team leader made the decision that they would throw the plates from their body armor over the side of the mountain because it was just too heavy to

to continue to carry it on their bodies in the snow up the mountain. After two hours under intense enemy fire, the 2nd Rangers unit made it to the top. There, they regrouped with the remainder of the 1st unit and eventually took the peak. Sat in his dorm on the other side of the world, Aaron can barely believe what he's just heard.

It's just a crazy moment in one's life. The individual who called me for that call ended up re-enlisting, going back into the Ranger Regiment and deployed something like 15 times with special operations. But they weren't the only ones shocked by the news. That was one of the very first full combat engagements of the entire global war on terrorism. It was a seminal moment in that era. So much so that President Bush declared he would personally attend each soldier's funeral.

So did Aaron and several of his old colleagues. We were all staying in a hotel together and we were all driving in cars together for these funeral processions. We didn't know what to expect as a group. Eventually, they arrive in Florida for Sergeant Brad Crose's funeral. After the service, they join the procession to the burial site. And the road was lined with thousands of people on both sides. I'm going to have to tell this one twice. Sorry, give me a second here.

On the other side of the six-lane highway, the traffic is at a standstill. Drivers and passengers were out standing there solemnly as we passed them, and that was a really amazing moment. It really solidified my plan for me. Walking down that Florida highway, Aaron knew what he needed to do.

The deaths of his fellow Rangers had to be made to mean something more. I had decided that I was going to go and join a federal agency and one that was going to be heavily involved in counterterrorism. And to Aaron, that meant learning Arabic just as he had planned. Within another year, Aaron was back in Cairo doing just that.

By 2003, former US Army Ranger Aaron Brown had returned to Cairo. He'd visited once before during his time in the military. Where really a lot of this started for me. Studying at the American University in the city, Aaron learned Arabic whilst traveling around the region.

all these places that would become really important. I backpacked from Damascus up through northwest Syria and into Turkey, taking nearly the exact route that ISIS did the other direction when they took over northern Syria. I have pictures of myself drinking a beer in areas that were held by ISIS for more than a year and that the U.S. military, including some of my friends, fought to try and regain.

But the reception he received, as an American, surprised Aaron. One of the things we found to be nearly always correct is if they asked you where you were from and you answered, I'm from America, the response was unequivocally positive. I have an uncle in America who owns a shop and America is beautiful. Oh, and have you seen such and such movie? But if you said you were not from America, but the United States...

They would say, oh, that George Bush, he's not a good guy. Oh, the United States, you guys are involved in this, that and the other. And you have troops in Saudi Arabia. It's not an exaggeration. That is exactly how it happened. Aaron was starting to intuit one of the core skills of a true spy. How to make yourself agreeable to people who, by rights, shouldn't like you very much at all.

So much disagreement. It's just sometimes two words is the difference. And I learned this over and over again in Egypt. But opposition to the United States didn't deter Aaron. In fact, it only made him more curious. People would look back at this like I was missing a few screws, but I decided to go walk among some of these huge protests that were taking place in Tahrir Square against the United States.

I mean, thousands of people, thousands of Egyptians in this really famous square in Egypt where the Arab Spring was partially born. And I just walked around and chatted with people. They were shocked as well that an American was just walking around in this group of folks. They were happy to talk with me. I have a whole bunch of pictures of me standing in front of some incredibly angry signs that says, you know, kill all Americans. But it could be done. At no point did I ever have a fear for my safety.

He even went into Hezbollah territory in southern Lebanon alone. Super risky, for sure. Fortunately for me, I didn't get kidnapped or otherwise harmed. And I went down and learned a lot about Hezbollah and the politics in southern Lebanon. And that, of course, shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic going forward over the career in CIA and being an expert in the Middle East.

And by the time Aaron returned from the Middle East, now fluent in Arabic, that career in the CIA was beckoning. I'm sure they were actually seeking out former Army Rangers who speak Arabic. This was a period of time when that was still a widely sought after set of skills. But that didn't happen. And that's often not the story, actually, for these agencies. I went online. I found the website. I clicked on the job that I most wanted to do.

But there were two roles: case officer... And the job of a case officer, more than anything, is to be a people person, is to be able to assess and recruit spies. ...and another role: paramilitary officer. And that was actually my preference at the time.

And the paramilitary cadre of the CIA is also one of an extraordinarily storied and valorous past. These are the teams that went into Afghanistan before anyone else. The beginnings of their deployments started a day or two after September 11th. Several months after filing his application, Aaron gets an anonymous phone call. No reference whatsoever to the Central Intelligence Agency. And a phone interview was conducted.

After passing that, Aaron was flown to a classified location for a second round of in-person interviews. A lot of questions about...

international affairs and how would you handle certain situations if you were given these circumstances, you know, you're in a country, A, B, C, and D happens, what would you do? And this is just tests of your ability to think critically on the fly and then just your overall ability to engage with people. After that comes the psychological testing. The famous polygraph, a couple of additional interviews.

And then a really long background investigation with a really go deep on your life. And then? If you survive all of those checks, you get another nondescript letter that invites you to arrive to an address at a certain date. And congratulations, you've been hired by the U.S. federal government. But it's not all good news.

I was told that I was not going to be a paramilitary officer, I was going to be a case officer. And at that point I'd committed in my mind I was going to be a CIA paramilitary officer. To say that I was devastated is probably not an exaggeration. Just as Aaron was applying, the agency altered the requirements. New incoming paramilitary officers had been involved in combat, and I had not been involved in combat. I left the military before combat. Which made sense post 9/11, even to Aaron.

The CIA is not designed and isn't intended to be used as a combat force. But of course, if you get close to combat, you often find yourself also in combat. And so they choose people who are qualified to do that. "The gloves were off," was how the CIA's head of counterterrorism at the time put it. They pull from the ranks of special operations. They pull from the Navy SEALs and SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force and Rangers. Already disappointed at the snub, Aaron then takes another blow.

He won't be posted overseas at all. I end up getting assigned to a desk. But soon, Aaron works this to his advantage. I maneuvered myself into the Pakistan-Afghanistan department, which was doing the most important work in counterterrorism at that time. And at that time, counterterrorism was the most important work in the entire CIA. So this was a fine place to be if you were going to be at headquarters.

By 2009, he's assigned to liaise with a specific CIA base in Afghanistan.

and you start reading and learning and understanding what you've gotten yourself into. And you become pretty close to the people who are serving out in your base. Not least because... You're their lifeline back to many things, but very much you're their lifeline back to the CIA. If the base needed extra support from headquarters, Aaron was tasked with making that happen. If they needed intel on a particular target, Aaron would track it down.

You really feel like you're a member of the base, even though you're far, far away. The base Aaron was assigned to? Coast, southeastern Afghanistan. Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast, What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They

They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page-turner to help them escape the stresses of work, or a book that they've been reading for years.

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Just to give you an idea of what's happening at this time, as far as the Pakistan-Afghanistan department is concerned, bin Laden is still a ghost. Might not even be alive. Harder than anything to find even a clue about bin Laden at this time. Anyone who thinks that the agency knew where he was or that the Pakistanis knew where he was, or there were hunches or maybe some threads, at that time in 2009, there were not. There was zero. Zilch. Nothing.

The CIA team at Coast were desperately looking for information pointing towards bin Laden. In November 2009, Aaron deployed to Coast to spend time with the Camp Chapman team. It was a critical part of his role as the camp's desk officer back at Langley, to really see and feel what the base and its officers are really like, what they're going through.

You get to lay the land and learn about the operations and how the base worked and met all the people who were working at the base in order to really understand what's going on. Which in this instance was a new lead. Not on bin Laden, but his number two in al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

And if you're in CIA and you're in the counterterrorism center and you're in Pakistan, Afghanistan department at this time or out in co-space, this is an amazing opportunity in your mind. This is a chance to get at one of the leaders of al-Qaeda after many, many years. And you just don't pass up these chances. Aaron joins the first meetings, planning a rendezvous with the man who had provided the intel.

He was thought of as a potential source. No one from the CIA had ever met him. He was in Pakistan and he was communicating through the Jordanians that he was working on their behalf, claimed to be, and that he had a opportunity to meet with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two. The team knows that a face-to-face meeting is essential.

because that is really far and away the best way to make these operations happen and to determine if these potential sources can be trusted and also give them all the things, the training and sometimes stuff that's needed to make these operations happen.

Aaron spends a month at Coast Base planning the meet. At that time, it's becoming the most important thing in the Counterterrorism Center. It's this potential source, the possibility that he will get access to Ayman al-Zawahiri. There was nothing more important at this time, and the energy grew and built to make this happen. And that was an enormous amount of pressure on the folks out at Coast Base and the leadership. After a final dinner over Thanksgiving, Aaron says his goodbyes to the team and flies back to D.C.,

His one-month deployment is up. But even at Langley, his input was essential. Finding out as much as he could on the potential source. Assessing the security threat. Ensuring the base team isn't getting carried away. But still. I'll be honest, there's excitement. You know, there's, OK, we're going to make a big dent in al-Qaeda through this guy. And this is going to be an important day in counterterrorism. On December 30th, 2009...

That day comes. At Camp Chapman Base, coast Afghanistan, a local by the name of Agawan jumps into a red Subaru Outback. He sets out for Ghulam Khan, the only border crossing into Pakistan for hundreds of miles. He has an appointment to make. Upon reaching the rendezvous, he spots his man, a Jordanian doctor.

Using a crutch, the doctor heads to the car, greets Agawan and gets in the back seat. The Subaru roars into life and heads back into Afghanistan. After an hour's drive, Khost appears in the distance, as does Camp Chapman, the car's destination. Agawan is head of external security at the base. And his passenger, the doctor? A man named Human Al-Balawi.

He's the CIA's best lead on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda's number two. The closest that the CIA could get to the leadership at that time was the number three, whoever it was, and it changed a lot because that person was removed from the battlefield with regularity. And finally, Balawee was coming in to change all that.

It's the morning in Washington. And as the run-up to this is happening, I'll be honest, there's excitement. You know, there's, OK, we're going to make a big dent in al-Qaeda through this guy. After many months agonizing over the details of the meet. We thought that he was a bit of a coward because he kept moving the times for the meetings and kept vetoing

the planning that was being given to him. And a number of our thoughts were, understandably, this guy is too scared to cross the border. Previously a follower of al-Qaeda, Balawi had renounced his allegiance to the group after being caught by the Jordanian intelligence service. He was a jailhouse recruit.

And now he had joined the fight against bin Laden and his deputy, Zawahiri. He's often reported now historically as though he was a source, but he was not a source of the CIA at that time. He was thought of as a potential source. No one from the CIA had ever met him. He had, though, sent the CIA via his Jordanian handler an exact breakdown of Zawahiri's medical record, which matched with what the agency had on record.

By knowing information that wasn't publicly known, that went a long way to say, OK, well, he's at least in contact with the people that he should be in contact with if this story is true. He had sent photographs of himself with numerous al-Qaeda members. He even reported back on the exact casualty numbers from certain drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal region and had informed the Jordanians of a terrorist attack planned in the country.

After several months working with Balawee, the GID, Jordan's intelligence service, came to vouch for him. And the GID was not only an ally of the CIA in the war on terror, it was seen as one of the best spy networks in the Middle East, if not the world. For a true spy, this was as good as it got.

You don't ever think, "Oh, this person I'm meeting with who's agreed to do this thing is absolutely doing it on my behalf." Like, anybody who has that thought is doing this job wrong in espionage activity. Nonetheless, Camp Chapman's chief, CIA officer Jennifer Matthews, arranged the meet. The occasion was deemed so significant that President Obama was scheduled to be briefed on the outcome.

And I'm really interested to see how it's going to go. And I'm on one of our internal messaging systems with the base. And I'm talking to Harold Brown, a CIA security officer. And his last message to me was, oh, he's here. Got to go. The red Subaru approaches the gate. Deep within the base, a group of CIA officers assemble.

Special operators, legitimate commandos, people who'd been in Afghanistan almost since the beginning. Among them is Humana al-Balawi's Jordanian handler, who receives a phone call. On the other end, Balawi apologizes for the delay. Then he voices his concern. The Afghans guarding the base may be spies. As someone who's just crossed al-Qaeda, Balawi was keen to avoid them at all costs.

Understanding, his handler calls off the checks. Let's not do that because, you know, maybe we'll expose this guy and that could be negative for him. The Subaru zigzags through three checkpoints. And brought into the inner sanctum of the base where CIA's officers were present. One of them opens the door. Holding an assault rifle in one hand, he reaches to search Balawe with the other. Balawe jerks back. Something's wrong.

Next time, hear what really happened at Coast on December 30th, 2009. The deadliest day for the CIA in 25 years. This is a challenging topic to talk about. It's even one that I go back and forth with myself on in talking about. Laying blame is, I don't think, the most important thing that we could do here. There's plenty of blame to go around and some of those folks who deserve some of that blame are still very much alive and they have to live with that.

And frankly, I have to wrap myself in there.

And you'll hear how Coast shaped the CIA's later work, helping to hunt down none other than Osama bin Laden himself. I have some colleagues that hear me tell these stories and they're not happy about it. And they'll say, you know, they're the agency's dirty laundry outside. And I just don't think that's right. I'm convinced that this episode had an effect on the bin Laden operation that will end up taking place not very long after this operation.

I'm Rhiannon Needs. Don't miss the second part of The War on Terror next week on True Spies. Disclaimer. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the subject. These stories are told from their perspective and their authenticity should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

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Aaron and the team get word. The two Black Hawks, carrying two dozen SEAL Team 6 operators, had taken off, headed for the compound. I knew we were in the middle of history as this was playing out, and I remember thinking to myself, this is the stuff that people tell you, pay close attention to what's happening right now. And

And before long, the Black Hawk helicopters have entered Pakistani airspace. And now the threat is real because there's not 100% certainty that Pakistani air defenses aren't going to find this and they're not going to launch jets. And could this thing just absolutely implode right off the bat? It is a lot of stress in the entire space. Then they hear another announcement. Seals on the objective, which means helicopters have arrived.

But immediately, there's bad news. Primary helicopter over the courtyard. The rotors have stopped moving. And it felt like the entire office just stopped.

True spies from Spyscape Studios. Search for true spies wherever you get your podcasts. Americans love using their credit cards, the most secure and hassle-free way to pay. But DC politicians want to change that with the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. This bill lets corporate megastores pick how your credit card is processed, allowing them to use untested payment networks that jeopardize your data security and rewards.

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