Hamas, Al-Quaeda, Benghazi, & More with Sarah Adams

Sarah Adams, a former CIA targeter, joins Abdullah in the East Wing, where they talk about Hamas, Al-Quaeda, Benghazi, and other subjects. She is the co-author of the book Benghazi: Know thy enemy, and she also served as served as the Senior Advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi.

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Abdullah Najjar

What is In The East Wing?

Stories of espionage, war, and politics, with a primary focus on the Middle East. This podcast will bring together individuals who were involved in the region in different capacities and lived long enough to tell their stories. This will be raw, balanced, and undeniably suspenseful. Join Abdullah Najjar, as he takes you through a journey to a different world. A podcast by WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2.

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
All right, so this is my conversation with Sarah Adams. Sarah is a former intelligence analyst and targeter with the Central Intelligence Agency. She also served as the Senior Advisor to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi. In addition to that, she is the co author of the book Benghazi, Know thy enemy, a cold case investigation into the events that unfolded in Benghazi in 2012 where Ambassador Stevens, amongst a few other Americans, died as a result of the terrorist attacks by al Qaeda in the book, Sarah explores the attacks and showcases the terrorists who are involved. I hope you would enjoy my conversation with Sarah, and be sure to get her book when you get a chance. Sarah, it's always wonderful to have you on the show. I would love Welcome to the east wing. It's great to have you here.

Sarah Adams 1:02
Great to be here. Thanks. Good to see you again.

Abdullah Najjar 1:05
Yeah. Great seeing you too. So, as I mentioned earlier, before we started recording, I think I had you know different, different idea of what we know I could explore with you today. But obviously we just heard news not too long ago of the assassination of sinwar, the leader of Hamas and a principal architect of the October 7 attacks on Israel. And that's a major, think, a major piece of news that would, I think, I think it would be worth sort of exploring further in terms of the significance of the assassination, and I guess a little bit about, I guess, the assassination campaign is now being carried out by Israel, a very, very sophisticated campaign, I might add. So one thing I do want to say here is that you, you're the book you published with your with Boone Benghazi, no, thy enemy, I think the title, when I first heard of the, you know, Assassination of sinwar, I immediately sort of tried to further explore, you know, his background, the life that he had, and you know, obviously, the significance of his assassination. And with the title of your book, Know thy enemy. I think for sinwar, he did know, quote, his enemy for many years, right? He learned he was in Israeli prisons. He, he mastered Hebrew. He, you know, he knew he had a tremendous amount of exposure to Israeli culture, you know, Israeli language, obviously, Hebrew and a lot of other elements. So I think that worked out for him, I guess, pretty well in terms of becoming a leader, obviously, Hamas and, you know, with the sophisticated operations that he carried out throughout the years. So tell me about that. Tell me more about that. What do you was that? How often do we see that, say, from leaders like, or, you know, yeah, leaders like, like sinwar, who put such a great effort into really learning about the people that they are, that they deem to be their enemies. What's what this something, I think it's, it's something worth exploring,

Sarah Adams 3:20
yeah? Well, you don't see a lot of times the senior leaders take it to that level, right? I've seen a lot more, like external operatives, right? Like they want to go into the West and do an operation for, let's say it's al Qaeda or something, and they put the time in, right? They may be studied over there, you know, like they invest in understanding the culture. Because, like you said, the best way to actually attack or find the weaknesses right is to actually understand the environment, understand how you fit in the environment, how you might not fit in the environment, and then you can operate better. And so I think that is, like you said, what made him successful. And what made Hamas maybe feel that they were more powerful than they were, or maybe they even underestimated the Israelis, right? Because, you know, at the end of the day, we've seen, as you said, a lot of very targeted operations. Well, those weren't put together even in the last year, right? That could be 510, years of background, targeting, material, tracking locations, right? And then now they kind of like, you know, pull the trigger on those. So that's something too, we got to keep in mind, right? The enemy's watching us, and we're watching the enemy, and it's almost this, this cat and mouse game.

Abdullah Najjar 4:42
Yeah, and it's interesting that when I was reading earlier about the operation, it wasn't, it wasn't even planned. I mean, it was, it wasn't even a special operations force that carried out the assassination. That was quite interesting, because I would have thought that, you know, obviously. Actually, at first blush, I would have thought that, okay, this, this might have been planned from the get go, from the minute that, you know, news broke out about the the October 7 attacks. I would have thought that, okay, the plan from the get go is to try to, you know, get senoir, perhaps capture him, um, but as maybe that was a plan, but I'm sure that most of us would have thought that it would have been, perhaps, carried out by a special operations force, not necessarily like a regular, maybe military unit.

Sarah Adams 5:33
Well, when you something's short breaking and you don't have much time, you take who you can get, right? Unfortunately, you don't always, can't always bring in the Navy SEALs, right? So if you know, you have the short window to do something, and that resource takes 12 hours to spin up or to relocate or to get their supplies, right, you don't want to take that risk. In this case, at least, they didn't want to, right? And so they took, you know, the action arm, probably that was fastest, quickest and most effective to do it. That's my opinion on it, you know. But, you know, we'd have to wait to see kind of, you know, as we've learned with all these Israeli operations, we get every detail after the fact. Like, I can't believe in the details we've gotten on the pager operation. So I'm just sitting back and waiting to hear those details, because they're fascinating too.

Abdullah Najjar 6:23
Exactly, yeah, exactly. I do want to say that here, maybe this is something you have so much to say about, given your experience, obviously, with the CIA, with the agency we see now a great deal of, lot of the top dogs being, you know, taken out. You know, you got, you got the leader, obviously, of Hamas a Yahya senoi Hania, back in July, Hezbollah's leader, obviously, yeah, and this is we see this being carried out. But I think it's, it would also be interesting to know maybe what, perhaps understanding more about the strategic significance and the blow that that might create on these on these groups, whether it be Hezbollah Hamas or otherwise, especially since, I mean, you you might speak from, you know, us experience with al Qaeda and with taking out Osama bin Laden, right? That is a major blow. But I think it would be interesting to hear what you know, the sort of significance here, you know, strategically, and obviously, on the, on the, on the war, the operations that are being carried out, broadly speaking,

Sarah Adams 7:48
yeah, well, you use the right word, right operations. So, like the USS success really wasn't taking out Bin Laden, right? That was just kind of like the when they always wanted their success was over and over again, taking out the head of al Qaeda external operations, right? Because he would plan the attacks in the West, or they would whoever that person was, and you take them out, you stop a plot. You take out the next one, you stop a plot, right? So these key individuals now that we've seen, you know, you know, especially since January, kind of, you know, taking off the battlefield. These are key operational planners, right? Or they were key individuals who ran the missile program, right, or the training programs. And so those are, like, I like to call them the doers, right? They're the guys that, like, go get it done, right? And remember, a lot of them have 2030, years of experience. I mean, obviously some longer, you know, when we talk about even the individuals involved way back in the Beirut bombings, right? So you're losing 1000s of years of experience in Hamas and Hezbollah now, like that is extremely difficult to reinvent, right? And they likely will. They'll likely just align more with al Qaeda, as we mentioned. You know that the Taliban IRGC and take in those skills right, instead of bringing up really junior people to lead these things. So they luckily have the relationships to fill in some of these gaps, but it is going to be very difficult to be operationally effective. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 9:26
yeah. One thing that's interesting about recently you published is sort of a sketch of the ones who collaborated with Hamas from al Qaeda to carry out the October 7 attacks on Israel. Here, I'm interested to know more about that sort of connection that has been established, maybe over the years, maybe recently, and so you know what? When do you think that. That level of that, that relationship started being fostered and cultivated between Hamas and al Qaeda, to the extent that we, you know, we have now a collaboration on a deadly attack on October 7. I mean that that that is very significant to get love to maybe hear more about that, and you can tell us more about this, these names that you've published of all kind, operatives who collaborated with Hamas

Sarah Adams 10:29
well. The really interesting thing is, and I know you'll understand this, but the relationship that matters the most is like the Libyan Palestinian relationship, right? Because that's what is it in you know, he fought way back when, when the Italians came into Libya, and that's where this militant fighting Mujahideen type of relationship formed. But with you want to talk present day, really, a lot of it happened around the Libyan revolution, like Hamas members came in supported that. And then, as you know, like Syria, kicked off. And so al Qaeda was fighting in Syria along with Hamas. And then, as you know, there was the second Libyan Civil War, you know, mostly in Benghazi and Dana, starting in 2014 Hamas came in and fought with both al Qaeda and ISIS during that war, right? So a lot of people are like, Oh, they just came together. It's like, no, it's been at least a dozen years they've been having these fighting relationships, right? And as you know, these are major wars. The Libyan revolution was, I mean, the Syrian civil war is still ongoing, and they're so emotionally invested in that right, as people should be like, you know, over 600,000 Syrians have unfortunately died in that right, like innocence. So it does bring a lot of these people together. And it hasn't just the line al Qaeda Hamas. It's even brought ISIS closer to some of these groups, which is dangerous, right? The terrorists are coming together for joint causes,

Abdullah Najjar 12:05
yeah, yeah. There's also the element of, I think, the smuggle, obviously, smuggling of weapons through Egypt. And I may have, I think I briefly maybe you've talked about that with you recently, in recent months, that I think would have started after 2012 right?

Sarah Adams 12:30
Yeah, it actually started during 2012 um, main person at the time was college Sharif, right? He was setting up what they were calling the Libyan National Guard. But what he really was doing at the time, he was using that military unit as a cover, and he was buying like weapons, like he was a nation state, right? So not like black market weapons, but I'm the Government of Libya. I'm buying these weapons. And he was buying those weapons, sending them to Hamas, like you said, through these pipelines, through Egypt and whatnot. And then al Qaeda was also very involved. You know, as you know, from our Benghazi book, like Wissam bin Hamad was a key supporter of Hamas. And actually, when he died, Abu abeto, the spokesperson for Hamas, said, you know, with song, was the number one weapons supplier to the Al Qasim brigades, right? And then, you know, we talk about the famous drone program of Hamas, right? Everybody saw the air program as they came into Israel. Well, you know, that was named after a Libyan Tunisian, right? He was also close to al Qaeda in Libya, and like our Benghazi attackers, right? So these relationships have gone on for years. Even the United States, we have Ahmed Abu katalah in prison from Benghazi, you know, the kind of the person they claim is the mastermind, but he also was bringing weapons into Gaza for Hamas. And I even put in our book a picture of him in Gaza. So, yeah, these relationships go on a very long time. But like you said, they took advantage the most of this kind of security vacuum after Gaddafi fell, and that's really where the weapons got to, like a high level of proliferation.

Abdullah Najjar 14:20
This is this? This, honestly, this fascinates me, because, you see, now, there's, there's, there's no sort of us, Ambassador to Libya, there hasn't been a nom Well, there was a nomination. But I think, I think, if I'm not mistaken, the person who was being nominated, decided to, I guess, step down. And you see, perhaps the influence of both China and Russia, where, you know, they're trying to create some level of presence in Libya, but there are, um. But, you know, compared to us, influencer us, presence might not be as strong as that of, say, China's or Russians. And there's, you know, you have, obviously here, the issue of the proliferation, you know, the ties, these connections between Hamas and al Qaeda, what do you what is, what is the US, if they're playing any role in trying to mitigate that, what? What are they? What is the plan? Is there a strategy? Is there something that that is being done about this?

Sarah Adams 15:33
Honestly, in my opinion, if we're focused on Libya, I really think the US strategy has been like an anti Russia strategy. I don't really think they're focused on counterterrorism, like they were back during, like, gadafi's era. I think that's gone by the wayside, unfortunately. So I think that they're lacking in understanding this. I even remember seeing kind of one of the UN Security Council reports a few months back, and they made this comment about how there was a small group of, like, just 50 al Qaeda guys in Libya. And it's like, what are you talking about? I can't find 50 and three blocks into draw, right? So, yeah, there is a lack of really understanding collection. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right? And this increase in collection of, hey, we're going to focus on Russia and what Russia is doing, Russia is the enemy now, and that's really been the focus on Libya. Unfortunately, they really have, I think, huge blind spots on what the terrorists are doing, especially, like you said, not just the collaboration, but actually Libya has become one of the major financial hubs of al Qaeda. And I just think that's just been completely ignored and lost in the shuffle of all this.

Abdullah Najjar 16:45
Yeah, and you have this is something that I also may be interested in, interested in exploring with you. Here is the account of the death of the son of bin Laden. What his first name was, Hamza. Hamza Bin Laden, yeah, that, you know, you have reports in 2019 saying that, you know, he was assassinated in operation, but it seems to be he's still around. And that is what is happening here. What's the disconnect? What do we what are we seeing here? Why is there a sort of, why are there conflicting reports?

Sarah Adams 17:34
Yeah, I mean, the conflicting reports are because obviously the US government took the strike. And so when you do a strike, there's something called battle damage assessment, right? So you pull in all your info, and then you make your assessment. Yes, he was killed. Well, the US government feels very strongly in their battle damage assessment of that strike, to where they won't change their assessment, even though the Brits are even saying he's alive. Obviously, there's hundreds of Afghans now who have seen Hamza in the last few years, you know. So unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to get people to admit they're wrong, and Hamza's obviously taking advantage of it, right? He's not going out and doing speeches. He is doing meetings, but they're small meetings with very trusted individuals. As you can imagine, he doesn't even meet a lot of, like foreign type of delegations, unless it's like Saudis or something. So he is also smart to play the game. And so he's leading al Qaeda. But as you can imagine, if some people don't believe that they're not collecting on him, and so he's getting to, kind of like, operate in a shadow, right? And not even feel that stress of, hey, someone's coming after me. I mean, even if you look at the US most wanted list, they haven't updated it. So his bounty is $1 million right? That's nothing, um, yeah, bin Laden bodyguard was 5 million, right? So, yeah, so, so hams is not worried at all, right? Now,

Abdullah Najjar 19:02
yeah, yeah. And you have today also a very, perhaps willful, I would probably characterize it as willful avoidance of what is going on in Afghanistan, especially after with Napoleon, tend to withdrawal. And I don't know if that is an accurate description or characterization, but I would say, yeah, we're just, you know, avoiding whatever's happening there is happening over there, and there's an, sort of an we're overlooking the big picture, or not seeing the long term effects of not, perhaps taking a particular position or being robust in the approach of trying to tackle the situation over there. And this is, I think, something you might have a lot to say about, especially since we were just talking about Hamza Bin Laden, and he might very well be in Afghanistan, right? Right, if I'm not mistaken. So yes, what can you maybe you can describe to us a situation over there and how, how much of a sort of, how much of what is happening over there that's being overlooked?

Sarah Adams 20:14
Yeah, I mean, the same thing happened after Benghazi, right? When we pulled out of Benghazi, people really wanted to be done with it. We did stay in Libya two more years, but there was, like, nobody discussed Benghazi. Nobody worked Benghazi. You know, the press didn't want to touch it. It was crazy for a bit. And then after the election, they're like, I'm done. And now Afghanistan's the same way. You know, the administration's obviously pushing back to say, hey, it was successful. We took out all these people. But as we know, it's now become the greatest, you know, terrorist safe haven, probably of all time, right? It's way worse than it was in 2001 and it's now way worse than Iraq was at the, you know, three, 2004 time frame, which I don't think we ever thought we would see militancy at that level again. So it's actually very concerning. So yeah, and then, as you know, the other thing is the media then won't pick it up right, because they reach out to the administration or to the different intelligence agencies, and they're like, that's not true, or don't touch it. That's the Hamza Bin Laden problem. So the Hamza belatin story sat on the news desks in the United States for over two years. That was basically the Brits pushing it out through their news outlets because US press wouldn't run it. So it actually also shows there's this kind of, like, I don't know what you would call it, this push and pull between maybe British intelligence and the US government's intelligence over the Hamza Bin Laden issue, which means there's a bigger problem between, right, the government's over the al Qaeda issue, right? Which is a problem that's at least if you're American or closest ally, you know, especially on the counter terrorism front. But for the for our whole existence, really is Britain, right? So, so we have to keep that in mind too, because some of this not paying attention to Afghanistan or letting other people be harmed by what's coming out and emanating from Afghanistan is damaging some of these long term relationships we have, besides all these counterterrorism assets and technology and investments we've made for 20 some years that we just like walked away from and said, these platforms or these people don't matter to us anymore, and they do, right? There's going to be more attacks coming from Afghanistan. And then how do we circle back with these people and say, oh, we need you again, right? Like there's people I know now that hate the CIA when they served with us for very long periods of time. That's a very scary situation, right? Some are even in America, and they're turning now against the US, right? I mean, we just saw it with the individual detained last week. Right? He was a local guard at the CIA Base in Afghanistan about a year ago. He became like, he just spent a lot of time with extremist content online, and got, like, pulled into it and then reached out to ISIS right that stems from something right, a break in trust.

Abdullah Najjar 23:09
And would that be an unconventional case where it's, it's, it's, you know, significant to the withdrawal of Afghanistan, or do we see some of that disappointment in other places where, you know, you had people serve with the agency, maybe in Iraq, maybe in Syria, and that level of disappointment manifests in the you know, obviously into plotting, or these plans to attack the US. And before we even talk, you know, maybe you have something to say about that. There's also the access through, you know, southern border issue, right? That's something that could be further explored. So I'd love to maybe hear, hear your thoughts on that.

Sarah Adams 23:53
Well, I think the major abandonment in the past of like, allies was really the Kurds, right? The Kurds never, though, turned on us. And I think it was a lot, because so many like on the ground American troops stay connected to them. A lot went over and volunteered with their own time and own money and fought with them. So it was almost like these personal relationships at least kept some of the tie going, but it was a huge abandonment of them, right? So I think the Afghans are feeling the same way, and the problem with the Afghans is slightly different. So we brought a large number of them to United States, but their wives and children are still in Afghanistan, so you're in a tough situation, right? Because it's a country the women can't go out and do anything, right, unless they have someone in their family there. Taliban are taking advantage of this, right? They're saying, I'm going to marry your 11 year old daughter off to the Taliban, if you don't come back to Afghanistan, right? So they're doing a lot of blackmail, too, which is then. Now going to put these people in a compromising position. They got a lot of them to return. They're now torturing them. So this is the this ongoing problem, right? And then now those people feel, hey, I might have a home in America, but America is still not protecting me, right? There's even Taliban and Haqqanis in the United States actively targeting these people, letting the Taliban and Afghanistan know where they are. They're reaching out to them. So it's this constant, like, you never feel safe or secure when they should feel that way here. So if they're losing trust too, like, Hey, how are you bringing my enemy here? And you say you're going to protect me, like every ounce of trust is basically being broken again and again.

Abdullah Najjar 25:44
That's interesting point, though. How? How are they gaining? How is the Haqqani and the Taliban sort of gaining access here? What? What's, what's, what is, how, like it's, is that, um, that is very unusual. I would probably say

Sarah Adams 26:00
it's unusual in normal circumstances, okay, but in the way we did the withdrawal from Kabul, really, the main standard was you had to work for the government for a certain amount of time. And it was a very small amount of time, like a year, in some cases. Now, we spent 2223 years in Afghanistan, right? There are times members of the Taliban and members of Haqqanis work with us, and they are actually eligible to come so unless someone intercedes in the process and says that person's Haqqani. And even then, people have tried, and they've still gotten here, which is frustrating. So a lot of Taliban worked for us over the years, right? We weren't probably doing the counterintelligence good enough to do something about it, right? But they are eligible to come and until somebody actually does a really good job and looks at the process and actually does an extreme vetting of the situation, they're going to keep getting here. And once they're here, it's very hard to get them out, right? That's the one problem, right? They're now America's problem in America for a long period of time. Gosh,

Abdullah Najjar 27:07
and this is not something that I think it would that be considered unprecedented, like I don't think there were. This is where, I guess, you know, reached the limits of my knowledge here, but I don't know of historical instances when you had such, you know, maybe from a different country, terrorists being present because they present in the country because, because they figured out maybe a loophole hole in the system. And here mean you have this, this particular case of eligibility, and they're, you know, abusing that, that whole and obviously there's the issue of, you know, the southern border, there's access to, which might be overlooked as well. So here we have two ish, two primary issues where that can create a, you know, that can make terrorist activity rampant domestically. What? What's, you know, how? How can one be able to fix that? I mean, so that's a big problem. I

Sarah Adams 28:17
mean, it's very complicated, right? There is even a situation where the Haqqanis were trying to marry. Haqqanis into women in the US pipeline, and it happened to one of my friends who was former CIA, an Afghan woman she was helping. Luckily, she's smart enough to know whoa family just married to her to a Haqqani, right? And she was able to contact the US government and cancel the application. But think of all these other volunteers. I mean, they're great humanitarians trying to help these Afghans, but they're not going to know that the daughter of the family married a Haqqani, right? It's just that there's nuances like that are very complicated, especially on terrorism stuff, as you know, even just, you know, in Libya, there's so many components, right? And the family level, the tribal level, that you understand, but I wouldn't understand it, right? You'd be like, well, that family for three generations has been involved in terrorism, but I wouldn't know that from the name so, so that's a huge problem we have too, and like you said, the terrorists are exploiting it. The other thing too is they are trying to make our government look foolish, right? They know that they can reach out and touch these people here. They know they can come across the border, and they're taking an advantage of it, right? Because, you know, it makes the US look weaker. And remember, to these terrorists in Afghanistan, they beat us, right? And now they're trying to replicate that. Libya is a really good example, right? The head of a. Libya. Belhaj and the head of al Qaeda in East Libya both contacted the Haqqanis like, how do we replicate this in Libya? Right? We know they're trying to replicate it in Mali. That's kind of like fast forwarded. They're doing highly successful. They want to replicate in Syria. They want to replicate it in Iraq, right? So Afghanistan now is the model, and to these terrorists, they think they defeated the US, and they will keep coming after us. And like you said, taking advantage of these weaknesses, because they know they can, and they know they're going to get away with it,

Abdullah Najjar 30:35
that that is very for those that are not paying attention. I mean, that could be very dangerous in the long run, especially when you have, you know, now, most of the attention is being focused on, you know, Gaza and Israel, and now obviously Lebanon. You know, we're on the brink of a regional war. For for some analysts, we could already be in a regional war, and there's a huge deal focus on, you know, trying to get a ceasefire, trying to get, you know, an end to the war. And obviously you've got Ukraine and Russia and the whole situation over there, it's, it's like, there's so much that's happening, but there's, you know, obviously there's things that can slip through the cracks, like this situation that we're seeing right now. You know, this abuse of the system by the Haqqani, the Taliban, and other issues unfolding where, you know, you mentioned earlier the case of the Afghan guard that was formerly an Afghan guard that is now plotting, or was planning to, you know, planning a plot against the US that that is. It's like, how it's a situation that is very tough, especially with, obviously, elections now coming in, like people are paying attention to it's like, you know, you've got this, this, this big picture, but there's a smaller picture that has a, probably an equal impact on what could happen domestically, here in the US. And that must be really frustrating, especially since, you know, you Sarah, have been carrying out so much, you know, an investigation and obviously trying to bring about a great deal of attention to these issues that are happening here domestically. I mean, that must be really tough to, you know, to see this, this level of minimal attention being paid to this situation.

Sarah Adams 32:29
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we talked about how, like, Afghans came here and became radicalized. But the other real thing that kind of broke America a little bit when the fall of Kabul happened, it impacted 20 years of veterans, right? The suicide rate skyrocketed. Like, we haven't seen the numbers yet, but it's sad. Like in all the circles I'm involved in, there are lots of suicides, lots of bankruptcies, lots of divorces and lots of foreclosures, because people invested their money into saving Afghans just from that small period. Okay? So I know we caught moral injury, but there's so much more that happened beyond that. So I saw that happen in 2021 now these groups are plotting again, right? Al Qaeda is plotting in it, homeland attack again. Now, what like if you think of how 911 affected America at the time, a lot of people had no concept of al Qaeda, bin Laden terrorism. You know, they knew some terrorist attacks. Obviously, you know, like the Africa bombings, the coal like, they understood those, but they weren't impacted by them. Now, you had all, a whole generation, volunteer to go overseas and fight them. So if and when Al Qaeda pulls off, it's what they're planning to be their 2025 attackers are calling it. Can you imagine the impact that's going to have on all the men and women who spent all those years overseas going after these guys? It's going to break an entire generation in this country, like, I don't think people are even thinking about like, what that is going to do. Like, and I know people say, hey, the focus is China and Russia, and they are long term, but we have a major short term issue that's going to cause way more damage in the near time where we can't say, oh, well, that doesn't matter anymore, because you can't wait till after the fact to deal with this, right?

Abdullah Najjar 34:28
But it seems like this is what's happening, where they're waiting until something happens and then there's a reaction. There's no sort of preemptive measure to try to tackle the root of the problem and try to fix the issue before it expands and becomes too big to control. And that's that's very, very tough, especially, you know, with the community that you're part of, and you know, the broader community of the veterans who have served abroad, it's like all of this effort is sort of going to waste now. I mean, that's, you know, it's like, you know, hey, US government, we got to do something, you know. So that's really rough. It's, it's really rough,

Sarah Adams 35:08
it is. And we have the same problem in Benghazi. So after Gaddafi fell, a lot of terrorists came into the country, right? So you think the focus would have been on collection against the terrorism, but it wasn't. The focus was on political reporting, right? I always say we only had one or two counter terrorism case officers in the entire country, right? That's prioritization by our politicians saying this is what we're giving you money for, and this is what you collect on, right? So we were sitting ducks in Benghazi like there wasn't counter terrorism dollars, let's say, going to the NSA right, to do signal collection on terrace and Benghazi like none of that existed. So it's almost like they put us there and we were only ever going to be attacked, right? And we did have, we didn't have any of the collection to protect ourselves, right? And now we're seeing this on a giant scale. In Afghanistan, we lost 98 to 99% of collection, according to the head of CENTCOM, right? Like that. That's a, that's a very high number for him to say. And so to have that kind of black hole, and look at the black hole, just for the Israel attacks, right? Look at that killed over 1000 people. So, yeah, like this lack of focus is like, you're watching this train come right, and you know it's going to, like, smash into a car, and you just have to watch it. It's like, the most frustrating thing ever.

Abdullah Najjar 36:32
Gosh, I remember what there was a time when I was attending this lecture with my professor, and we brought in two individuals from the agency. I forgot what their names were, but I'll reach out to my professor and maybe share those names, because you might recognize them. You know, at the time we were, you know, just sort of having a discussion with them about, obviously, their careers, and some of the, you know, some of the key operations that they can talk about, and you know the impact that they've and the impact of those operations. But in any case, I do remember, I think, one of the students asking a question about how they deal with the sort of work, how they deal with policymakers, not, not, perhaps prioritizing some of the reports that they submit, or some of the, you know, the the key elements of an impending danger where they, you know, the agent knows that this is important, but the policymaker, even though they are being, you know, briefed about it, they're not doing anything, or they're doing small things to tackle the problem, but they're paying attention to other things, and that, I think, especially with these people that were brought to the lecture, They said, It is frustrating, but at the same time you are serving you're not going to be political about this. You are serving the country. You're serving your government. No matter what happens, you're going to do your job. And maybe that's something that resonates with you. And maybe I might even have a story about that where you know, you find yourself in a position where you are providing accurate information about something that's very important, that should be paid being, you know, that the policy makers should pay attention to, but they're not, and that, you know, I'm sure that's really disappointing as well.

Sarah Adams 38:37
Yeah. I mean, that happens, as you can imagine, a lot of times, that one of the biggest problems, right? A lot of the analysts working ISIS, for example, President Obama didn't really want to hear about them, right? And so they would like you said, keep putting the reports forward. Keep putting the reports forward, and they weren't listened to your action and worked on and unfortunately, your job is to answer the questions of the policy makers and to give them information so they can make decisions. You know? I mean, one things I really like to focus on is, if you do think it's to a level right that goes beyond you can do more. So, you know, I had a situation where we were getting a lot of pressure from policy makers to do drone activities right. And there was the Mumbai attacks, and we were getting pressure from policy makers to actually do drone strikes right. And this was in my book on the terrorists involved. But as you know, and if anyone in the region there knew where we were doing the drone strikes right weren't where the Kashmiri militant camps were right two different sides of Pakistan, so we really couldn't affect them in that way. But I did have a boss that was going to do a strike on a camp that had bad reporting that it belonged to the group, even though we debunked it, just to make them happy, right? And. Yeah, there is a lot of that because the politicalization and so of course, I ended up stopping that and cause, you know, obviously some problems in my career doing it. But there are times you have to, you can't just say, This is my job. I march in line, right? Because you're also hired for your ethics, right? Like you're not just hired because you have this skill or that skill. You're hired because you're going to do the right thing to protect America and buy American ideals and for the American people, right? And so that, luckily, does exist, and a lot of people do step up, right and say, hey, it shouldn't have been done this way. I think you're seeing a lot after the fact, of a lot of people in the government who really didn't believe in the Iraq War, and a lot, not enough of them said it at the time, right? And now, after the fact, pretty much everyone in my generation, and I'm one of them, right? Like none of us believed in the Iraq War, and none of us thought we should go to war in Iraq, right? It's like you almost have to have that ground spell early, right? And we have to get that back into the government, like that doesn't really exist in the military, there's a chain of command. It's very difficult to do that. We start with that with Stu Scheller, after Afghanistan. That's not how they are. But the intelligence community is very different. In CIA, it's truth to power, right? I can tell the director of the CIA he's wrong, right? I'm not going to get in trouble for that. I'm not going to supposed to get reprimanded from that, right? Like they hire you because you're one of the people who can do that, and we have to keep having people like that,

Abdullah Najjar 41:32
right, right? I remember a story from one of my former guests here on the show, and I'm sure you recognize him. His name is Rick Prado. And, yeah, he was, you know, he's also in the agency. Knows him,

Sarah Adams 41:48
he's famous. Oh yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 41:50
oh yeah. 24 years in the agency, and a lot of interesting stories that you know, Rick has and and so, you know, we were having a conversation on the show, I don't know, a month ago or something, and one of the things that you brought to the discussion was the hunt for Osama bin Laden. And I remember you mentioned that in the 1990s he and another operative were in, not Afghanistan, Sudan, actually, and he had eyes on Bin Laden, but at the at the time, there were no, I guess, orders by the US government to have him apprehended, or perhaps even, and then, You know, he felt a level of, perhaps, regret after the fact, when you know, the 911 happened, and obviously with, with the ensuing hunt of bin Laden, because at earlier on, early on, he had, they had eyes on him, and he could have, you know, they could have gotten him, but because you didn't have, you know, orders from above you couldn't act on that and that, you know, instilled, perhaps a sense of guilt on Rick, and he was, you know, recalling that story. And obviously, you know, the outset, it's like, man, we might have been able to prevent those attacks from happening if we had those orders to apprehend or perhaps even, you know, kill bin Laden at the time.

Sarah Adams 43:25
Yeah. I mean, I had two situations like that. You know, one of my targets, we had the approvals on him for a year, and they went away, and unfortunately, he ended up killing in attack. Of course, he didn't target him himself, but he ended up killing a friend of mine. You know, in a in a suicide bombing, we ended up killing him, eventually, accidentally, he was at a location we were striking, and he was there. And then another great example is Mukta balmukta, I remember I went up to Libya to capture him. Well, our chief wanted me to capture him. The headquarters didn't approve me to capture him. We ended up pushing through all the approvals. But, you know, it took so long to get the approvals. Ended up kind of having a one day window to get him. And then, as you know, he ended up being the mastermind. And right? He basically his attack led to the death of Ambassador, right? So so many people in the CIA also had those type of situations, right? Where it's like, if one thing had gone better sooner, could it have been different? Right? It's, it's a frustrating career, right? Because you see your failures just as equally as your successes, right? And you have to you do have to live with them, and you usually don't get to talk about them with anyone. I luckily got a few of my stories approved, as you know, from my book, but there are so many things like that that will always weigh on you, right? Because you take it as a personal account, even though, as you know, everything can go wrong in some of these countries. Right? Like you could try forever to get someone and never get him, right? It's a frustrating thing, and it's a frustrating career for some people.

Abdullah Najjar 45:08
Gosh, no, I would imagine. I mean, you mentioned the story of, and obviously the loss of your friend, that's, that's a major deal. I mean, in those situations, what's, you know, what's the mindset like, you know, maybe you have, you can recall some of some of those memories. I mean, what was going on in your mind, in your mind, and, you know, especially when you have, when you experience such a loss. I mean, it's like, is that? Is that, I mean, obviously it is, it is sad and perhaps even reckoning, but there's that might create, also a sense of motivation, of wanting to maybe overcompensate and go after it, you know, I'd be interested to know more about that, sort of the what's, you know, the psychology of that, what's, what was going on in your mind at the time.

Sarah Adams 46:01
Yeah, a couple different things can happen. Like you said, Some people go all in, right? And be like, I'm going back to the war zone and I'm going to take it to these guys, and then they're not in the right mental space. Another thing that happens, though, and people don't realize this, is a lot of people quit, and you've invested large I mean, just recruiting into the CIA is a lot of money to pick the talent, right? And then you put them through these long training programs, and then they serve overseas in these environments, and they pick up all these skills, and then this trigger happens, and they're like, I'm out, and they leave, and you lose so much skill and so much talent, right? And I think that's one of the things that gets lost in it, and then you have this strange thing, like people like me, right? Who are like, well, maybe I can do a better job outside of this environment, right? Maybe we, I can find different ways to get after it, because some of us did feel harmed by our government, right? We thought, hey, our friends died. Why did you not prioritize going after their attackers? Right? And it's not just us that feels that way. There's a lot of people who their family member gets kidnapped, right? You know, like, like, James Foley type of thing, and then they die right by the terrace, hands in custody. And those families kind of feel like, could you have done more? Should you have done more? And they sometimes feel like, hey, the government let me down. And so we do have that feeling too, of people in my generation just thinking my government let me down, which is strange, because I volunteered to serve them, like, why aren't they giving back what I gave,

Abdullah Najjar 47:43
right, right? That would be rather emotionally debilitating. There's, there's also, I guess, the idea of wanting to maybe, like you mentioned, maybe you can create sort of change from the outside. And I think you are creating that level of, you know, trying to make a change, trying to maybe bring more attention into what's unfolding domestically and abroad, especially in Afghanistan. But at the same time, I think this is question, maybe you don't get a lot. What? What do you maybe miss most about being being in the agency now that you've been out for a while?

Sarah Adams 48:29
I mean, the thing I miss most about the agency is the budgets and the technology, right? Because if you need to get something done, you have the money to do it. You don't have to, like, count pennies or beg for money now, right? I'll have an amazing lead or amazing opportunity, but I can't personally fund it, right? And so I have to, like, not do it right. And then it kills you, right? Because you like, if I was in the CIA, I could have ran down all these rabbit holes, and I would have the answer by now, right? So I find that as like a frustrating thing, because you did have when I at least what I did in the CIA, I always was in a position where I was kind of got to be a self starter. I got to work kind of like my own targets and my own projects, right? So I had a lot of ownership, and then, like I said, I had a lot of resources to to to play that out. And so it is hard when you don't have the resources anymore,

Abdullah Najjar 49:29
right? I would imagine that it's, it's like a blessing in disguise, and once it's you no longer have it, it's like, Oh, I I miss that, you know,

Sarah Adams 49:39
oh, like running a phone number. Like, Oh, I get phone numbers all the time, and I can't do anything with it, like, drive I, like, lose sleep over it. I'm like, Oh my gosh, someone could be using this phone number right now. So, yeah, it's a frustrating thing.

Abdullah Najjar 49:51
Oh, my Lord. And what, um, there's, here's another question that maybe you don't get asked a lot as well, but if you were, um. Um, if you were to look back at your days at the agency, what if you know what is a case or a scenario, if you can disclose it, that you think you could have done better something that you you're like, maybe I could have done a better job at that one?

Sarah Adams 50:21
Yeah. I mean, that's a really interesting thing to bring up, right? One of my biggest failures, it wasn't a failure, but I went overseas, and there was a piece of training I didn't have, but I didn't know I was going to need it, and that training was basically to do the training to talk to a detainee. Okay, so I go overseas, no plans to talk to detainees, and I go to this location, and the boss there was like, Oh, I'm going to teach you everything about my job. And I was like, okay, so every day he put me through, like, the craziest things. And so then one day, he's like, we're gonna go debrief a guy from al Qaeda today. And I was like, Okay, right? No background, well, so I do all my reading on him. I knew who he was, so it's not like I was going in and nothing, but I did my reading. I looked at his photo, and I went in, and they bring him in the room, and he has this black bag on his head, which I know is in the movies, but if you've had no training with this, like, it almost made me panic a bit. I was like, they had this black bait. And I know he's a terrorist, right, but you're still a human. I was like, they got this black bag on him. Oh my gosh. So they take it off, and he's super skinny, but in the photo I saw, he's super fat. I was like, Oh my god. So in my head, I'm like, what is the Pakistan he's doing to this poor guy at night? Are they torturing him. So the funny part is, right? Because you have all these emotions. I had no training to deal with it, and I know he was a terrace in front of me, right? But I had no interactions with him. So I'm just seeing this human come in, and I'm all, I'm having all these physical emotions to what I expected it to be, right? So that, when it was funny, after that trip, I went back and told my boss, like, I'm going to this training the next time it opens. And it actually mattered so much to me, I went on to be a trainer in that program, because I didn't want anyone else to feel that way, because it was, it was, I'm really a super even keel person, and it was one of the first times I kind of felt, I guess, what would be anxiety for most people, right? And I was just, my brain was all over the place, you know? And I was like, making up scenarios in my head. I had this guy hanging by his feet at night in the Pakistani jail, like, in my head, right? They were doing it. But, yeah, so that's probably one thing that I could have gone into a little better. Oh

Abdullah Najjar 52:40
my gosh, yeah. Well, at the end of the day, I don't think it was, it was, you know, maybe it wasn't, after all, your mistake, you know, you didn't think he needed it. He made an essay. You should

Sarah Adams 52:50
have taken a better picture of him like it was just a bad angle. It was not accurate to what he looked like. Oh

Abdullah Najjar 52:58
my gosh, yeah, that's, that's a lesson for Wow, there's another question I wanted to ask you about. I noticed that recently, there's a What's the story of, like, super, super bad, like, that's, that's, is that your code name? Is that? Because I see it and I'm like, there's, there has to be a story about that.

Sarah Adams 53:23
Well, the thing is, we all have call signs right when we're overseas, and, like, usually someone chooses them for you. But I had a lame one. It was just one from, like, the area I was from, you know, in the United States, but it wasn't anything good. And so I had a reputation for, like, maybe going around the rules, doing things ethically, but like, getting stuff done. And so Boone, you know, who ended up being my co author many years later, would call me super bad. He's like, Oh well, super bad, I'll get away with it, or super bad, I'll figure out how to do it. And so it became my nickname. And then you'll see some people shorting it. So like, tanto from Benghazi calls me SB, and people always like, what's that about? Like, well, just super bad shorting. So, yeah, it's just everyone gets their call signs. And mine's good, right? People have bad call signs. I remember when I was overseas, this is guy, his call sign was somebody. And so, like, we had to do all this radio chat, and it would be like, hey, whatever princess is here with somebody. And then the boss he it's like, he never could catch on. He was like, who's somebody? He'd say like, 50 times. So finally, we had to change the guy's name, because the boss could, like, never, like on him. It's like, they've said somebody 40 times. Like, but yeah, so some call signs don't work, but, um, yeah, it is what it is. It just

Abdullah Najjar 54:39
reminds me of a hilarious scene from a movie called rush hour three. And I don't know if you know that scene or you've seen that movie, but it's, it's they're in this place where they're talking to, I guess, Chinese people, and it's just a comedic scene, but essentially, the names are you and me, or something like. That. So that creates a great deal of confusion. And

Sarah Adams 55:04
there's just Yeah, it's like, who's on second, or all that stuff, right? Yeah. And

Abdullah Najjar 55:08
I'm sure a lot of people that are that might be listening to this, who probably know what that scene is, but yeah, I do have one, one final question, and this is actually about about Boone and the tag name, or the code. So we talked about your code and your co author, Boone Benghazi, Know thy enemy. What's the what's the code about? Or do we need Boone to sort of explain?

Sarah Adams 55:35
Oh, like Boone's call sign? Yeah, that's a well that comes from his military time. So most of the guys, they had a call sign when they were in the military, and he used to be a Marine, and then they carried those same call signs over to the CIA. So usually the call sign has nothing to do with their time in the CIA unless they did something super stupid and got a new one. So yeah, so those are mostly just like lame military stories, and nobody wants to hear those. They're always boring.

Abdullah Najjar 56:06
I'm sure, I'm sure, for some for so it's hilarious. Oh gosh, well, yeah, Tara, I really appreciate your time, and I'm glad we, we got to do this. And I you know, it's the what's happening right now. Middle East is quite dynamic. A lot of things changing. You know, we I never expected that I would. You know, before I record this episode with you, that news of a sinwar dying, breaking out so that that that really, that's a major, major piece of news that I'm sure in the next couple of days or even coming weeks, a lot of other stuff will will be unfolding. And you know, we'll probably be keeping an eye out on that. So, so again, I mean, thank you for showing up and having this conversation with me. I really appreciate

Sarah Adams 56:50
that. No and thank you. I mean, obviously, besides having the living connection, you also have, you know, a lot of background on Lebanon too, right? So it's good to talk to someone too is very abreast of the situation going on. So.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai