# S1E17 Zain Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/s1e17-zain Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/s1e17-zain.md Podcast: [John Kiriakou's Dead Drop](https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115) Published: 2026-03-02T08:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/john-kiriakous-dead-drop/episodes/s1e17-zain Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/699e511e123f9740820fec2f/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/episodes/s1e17-zain Duration seconds: 1706 ## Resource THE BLURB: For 70 hours, almost three days, John was responsible for handling Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist the agency believed was Al Qaeda's number three. Though their time togeter was relatively short - and Zain (Abu Zubaydah's actual name) spent much of it unconscious - John did manage to build a human connection with him and began to appreciate the person inside the nom de guerre. Zain is renditioned elsewhere. John goes back to work interrogating all the other terrorists they'd grabbed alongside Abu Zubaydah while Abu Zubaydah begins to encounter the treatment that would ultimately lead to torture. SHOW NOTES For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/episodes/s1e17-zain/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/s1e17-zain.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.